Recently I read an article titled “The Content Conundrum” by Christopher Detzi on boxesandarrows.com and it was awesome. I loved it, and I shared it. This article is NOT an argument against Christopher’s point. He made a very good one. I just think he forgot something, but I think he’d probably agree with with what I’m about to say :)
The designer and copy writer need to speak to the SEO too!
The reason I thought to write this article is because recently someone asked me whether or not he should have text on his home page for SEO, because he didn’t want to have the page scroll. When I gave him my answer to that, he then concluded that perhaps the design of his site should focus around the content, instead of the other way around. I shared Christopher’s article with him and also explained the following:
I think the idea to formulate design around content is good BUT I think that the content and design themselves need to be headed up by internet marketing decisions.
The thing Christopher leaves out of that article is the SEO component – I have seen designs that can compromise SEO and to someone like me it’s really annoying :) Even if the web copy and design is fantastic, the cost to fix those development and design issues when starting SEO will be so much more expensive and time consuming than if the team simply consulted the SEO at the start of the process. But perhaps my usage of the term “SEO” makes it sound limiting here. When I talk about SEO, I refer to the entire process of inbound marketing, because in my theory, if you bring thousands of visitors to your site with marvellous SEO, but then no one buys anything, there was no point to your investment. SEO must be taken into consideration with all Internet marketing, and with that said, it should be part of the web copy writing and design process at the very start.
I guess it’s because people think that marketing, especially web marketing, is creative, so they think it’s subjective and there are no constraints or systems or methods or ‘rules’ to it. Basically if one person thinks it looks nice, or reads well, then it’s good marketing. But that is a false belief. There are actual theories and studies around this. It’s like the famous quote by Steve Jobs:
“Most people make the mistake of thinking design is what it looks like…People think it’s this veneer — that the designers are handed this box and told, ‘Make it look good!’ That’s not what we think design is. It’s not just what it looks like and feels like. Design is how it works.”
The sad truth: ‘The Content Conundrum’ can’t always include the SEO when resources are tight
For most smaller companies, to say “make sure your copy writer, designer and SEO are all a part of your Web site decision making, and then also don’t forget the web developer” is an ‘ideal’ situation. Not everyone has the resources to hire an Internet marketer to head up design, development, content and SEO considerations. (For the record, when I work with agencies, this is why I ask them to let me hire the designer on my end, because it gives me control over the website process in all those aspects, especially the SEO.)
So I would say, for companies that don’t have all those resources in place, make due with what you have. Let the designer and content provider work together if you don’t have an Internet marketer to strategize the overall SEO and Inbound marketing goals of the site. Here is what to tell them, or have them consider in their work:
After you get people to the site with great SEO and traffic building (which can theoretically, but not ideally, come later), what do you want them to do on the site? Don’t expect that you want them to read everything, that won’t happen. You need to ask yourself what action you want them to take. The design and content need to facilitate the behavioural psychology around that.
Do you want them to fill out a form? Do you want them to call you? Do you want them to buy something? Whatever it is, don’t make it hard for them to complete that goal. And don’t have too many goals either.
In that light, you’ll want to read these articles:
And watch this TED talk it’s so fun: http://www.ted.com/talks/
I recently saw an e-commerce site that was nearly impossible and despicable to navigate through. On the home page it used a term that no one ever uses. So at the outset it was confusing what this site was about, let alone who would be searching for it from an SEO perspective. Then when you clicked on “product” there were no products. There were weird icons at the bottom of the page after some text and busy stuff happening, but it would take a genius to figure out that those were product categories leading to an online store. Meanwhile, on the home page, a link said “complete your order” with a ‘play’ button next to it. The weird thing is that a person on the home page isn’t able to add anything to their cart, so how and why would they click on “complete your order”? The real kicker of this site is that the target audience was a 65 year old female. So good job web site people – you just confused someone who is already confused.
This site I’m talking about was likely ridiculously expensive and made by a ‘big name’ agency. And yet, here I am, an Internet marketer and web developer that uses the web every day, and I can’t figure the site out – how is a 65 year old woman going to figure it out? Honestly, it does NOT take a big agency and lots of dollars to simply put your mind to things like this and THINK about what you’re doing before you do it. Before you design, before you write, think about your GOALS. If SEO is your goal for the site, design and write with that in mind. If Inbound marketing is the goal, go with that. If you just want to tell people about your web site and not have search engine traffic leading to it, then so be it – whatever you do, give it 100% of what you’ve got. But please, think about what will happen to this site and what you want to do with it after you get married to it.
I think the hardest thing for me as an Internet marketer is that clients often come to me with a mindset of what they want and they are married to that idea. They saw it on a competitor site, they have beliefs that aren’t really true (like they want big images occupying the top part of their pages, which is not a scientific behavioural idea of what makes a good web site because people are known to scan pages to find text and ignore images). Or like how one person didn’t want scrolling – it’s an innocent thing to believe, but at least when I showed him what’s happening on the web now, and that there is nothing wrong with scrolling, he didn’t say, “well I think you’re wrong.” He actually paused a moment and said to himself, “maybe I should take a step back and reconsider this.”
So when I try to give feedback based on all these things (because it’s my business to know about it, literally), I am often slammed down by non-experts. And then I have to say “yes master” and just do whatever a client wants. I have learned to just drop the discussion at that point, because after I explain it to them once with all my theories and essays, if they can’t recognize the ‘proof’ and effort I’m giving to them and their project, then there is no hope for them :) From that point on it’s just, “tell me what you want me to do and I’ll do it.” Then they can be the expert Internet marketer from that point on :)
It is rare that I work with someone who just trusts me to do what I do best, which is interesting, since people trust other professions, like accountants, to just do what they spend time studying. So all that passion of mine can get bottled up, which is why I’m glad for outlets like blogging and reading other people’s blogs, like boxesandarrows.com.
So thank you Christopher, for writing The Content Conundrum – people like me need it to make our case against the weird ideas people can have about what works, and what doesn’t on the web these days.