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It is the chicken before the egg of the online industry.

Which comes first usability or SEO?

Designers and developers often take one stance on the issue, and SEOs another. I am not sure there is a right or wrong answer. Despite how many in our industry present information the only way we can quantify any degree of success in what we do is by measuring how profitable a web property is (I know not all websites operate for revenue, but who cares about them?).

Profitable sites have been built without sound search engine optimization.

Profitable sites have been built with poor usability.

Neither of these points can be argued.

But in a fantasy land of project perfection, sound SEO can lead to high quality usability. Here the two concepts can dance in a green meadow beneath a candy rainbow; also known as Canada (SES Toronto trip showed me how majestic it is North of border)

The Place Where Sound Usability and SEO Begin

SEO and usability meet at an intersection called navigation.

A quality navigation should contain both elements of optimization for search and high quality end user experience.

A great user experience via navigation that leaves SEO out of the picture could cause serious issues as the project goes forward. A navigation that meets all of the needs of the SEO working on the project might not be the right fit for smooth use of the site.

How to Create a Harmonic Navigation

Sound navigation development should begin before a web development project is ever started. So should high quality keyword research. Your information architecture is fed by the keywords you want to focus on for conversion, and your navigation should be a reflection of your information architecture.

I begin this process with keyword research. I have talked about this process in detail in my Beyond Keyword Research posts. I find my general, conversion driven terms I want to construct my site around. This is not the time to look at the longtail, this is the point to look at what your site is supposed to do.

Are you selling clothes for dogs? Get generic terms people are searching for this concept i.e. doggie clothes, dog clothes, puppy clothing.

Are you publishing a sports blog? Get the generic terms suited to your niche (please have a niche) i.e. South Carolina Sports, South Carolina Sports News

Create your list of useful keywords and begin to assign them to the various tiers of your site.

Tier 1 is your homepage.

Tier 2 is comprised of your the categories of information fed by this page, not deep content, but more focused than your universal homepage. Your second tier pages, based on your second tier terms, become your main navigation element.

Let’s take a look at Amazon’s navigation for example:

The second tier of this site is comprised of terms such as books, movies, digital downloads, etc.

Sure enough when you navigate to these pages they are optimized for these terms.

The designer can take the information architecture you create, and build a user friendly interface based around your key terms.

The designer and the SEO can now become best friends. Working hand in hand to create a navigation element that is based on SEO friendly information architecture and solid usability principals. The designer should respect the SEOs recommendations on keywords, as their linked text will be important to the link equity distribution of the site, and the SEO will need to understand and work with the designer if info needs to be trimmed for quality user experience.

Now it is time for the developer to enter the party half drunk and with his shirt off.

A great navigation, built on tiered keyword research can have its usefulness destroyed if written in a way that is not search engine friendly.

The developer needs to make sure that the navigation that the designer and the SEO planned is able to pass link equity to pages through linked text. If this is not the case not only will the pages not get the benefit of link juice passed through keyword rich linked text, they most likely will not get indexed unless via a sitemap.

A well coded, search friendly navigation is key.

Navigating to the End Product

The end product of this harmonous act is a navigation that funnels conversion, link equity, and is easy for the user to understand.

I know when I go to Amazon looking for a book exactly where to go to navigate down to my selection. Amazon also knows that the term “books” , which they rank #7 for, although broad is important to their search engine campaign.

The Usability of SEO

In this example, sound optimization practices fed sound usability. Other concepts can do the same.

- Creating a user friendly HTML sitemap

- Creating a dynamic sidebar navigation based on information relevant to the page that is shown

- Minimizing the use of images, javascript, and flash

All of these concepts serve both usability and search engine optimization.

And so, although the battle will continue in agencies everywhere, I think it is safe to say that usability and SEO should come about at the same time; the moment of the websites inception.

Other resources:

Cre8pc offers a bunch of information on this very topic.

A break down of an SES Session on this topic from TopRank Blog.

A great article by Shari Thurow on Search Engine Land

And a post by Eric Enge on Search Engine Watch

What are your thoughts on the Usability of SEO?