(or the lame academic sounding title)

“Dimensions of User Experience: SEO, PPC, and good Marketing”

If you want a lot of traffic, i.e. REAL PEOPLE WHO WILL GIVE YOU MONEY FOR STUFF,  there are basically two groups of people you have to please.

1. The Google Gods (who are now increasingly pressured by the FTC, but we’ll leave that out of it)

2. The holders of wallets and credit cards ( i.e the cool people in  your market that you actually provide a lot of value for and who give you money)

DO these two things and you go to marketing heaven, with tons of traffic and cash.  Get it wrong and you’ll get slapped hard.

The Google Gods Only Real Commandment

“Serve my searchers great user experience, and ye shall be given traffic”

On User Experience And My Lack Of Expertise, And Ultra Scientific Credibility To Teach It

Recently, I got accounts with google adwords suspended.  Not a big deal and mostly a misunderstanding that looked bad.  There have been after all, a lot of changes recently with google, adwords, etc.  I guess what I am saying is I am going to talk about the effect of user experience on marketing in general, and why you should pay attention to and think about it, but I just want you to understand this is kind of just the stuff that I have been able to pick up so far.

So, getting blacklisted sucked, and luckily me and my google rep were able to have a nice chat and all is now well.

I frankly, was pissed.  A few of my friends can attest.  Pissed.

Then I turned my brain on and realized that those people over at google were actually super smart.

I’ve also realized that google is starting to almost be able to just tell if you’re being legit or not. And it seems that the more real and authentic you usually are, the more google trusts you and the more people will trust you too so word to the wise just shoot straight.

So, that takes care of the fact that this is neither comprehensive nor super scientific, it’s just my observations, but I should also note… The BIG IMPORTANT THING TO REMEMBER: it’s not just about pleasing google it’s about actually giving a unique, better user experience and helping REAL people.  Luckily, google will be the judge of that, more and more. 

Remember the first and only commandment of the google gods.

Dimensions Of User Experience:

So here’s what I came up with, it’s a short list.  Not comprehensive but interesting to think about and probably just about everything…

1. The highest and most important dimension is… RELEVANCY.

RELEVANCY, RELEVANCY, RELEVANCY.  MATCH THE CONTENT TO THE SEARCH, EXACTLY. Period. (that’s like 2 periods)

Remember this is what made google so good in the first place.  I remember back when we used to ride the bus home from school and ask each other if you had AOL yet and whether or not you were allowed to chat online yet.  And when you had to do essays and research reports it was super hard and teachers didn;t like you to use the internet because the search engines usually just coughed up garbage.  Then google came along and it was like “whooa this is soo cool, I search and it actually brings up stuff that I am looking for… AMAZING!”

Yes we used to be so easy to please.  Now people get mad if the WI-Fi on the air plane goes out.  (another story)

As If I haven’t expounded on the first point in my “numbered list” enough..

The fact is relevancy is the thread through eveything else I can come up with…What is google’s job really, anyway?  Match the webpages to searches that are most likely to give the person what they want and therefore… a great USER EXPERIENCE

2. Authority/Credibility

This is just kind of part of how google figures it out.  I see two peices these days.

1- In bound links, i.e. the math driven and measured popularity contest, how many people link to you?

2- Social Media, you can argue that they are one in the same, don’t matter or are the only things that matter.  I don’t care, all I know is google is too smart not to care how influential a lot of REAL people think you are in social media, so they’ll use it.  It only makes sense, they want to give the highest number of people that are searching what they are looking for, and usually most people are looking for the best most popular person.

3. Popularity: google is super smart. And that’s why they don’t trust their own opinion. Google fundamentally seeks to validate their guidelines on a point by point basis by leting humans, the real users vote for themselves on how the experience is going using their actions

yep.  1 example.  If you have an image that ranks in the image search listings, because you named it something like… I don’t know, “brown puppy”.  And no one clicks on it, google tracks that click through ratio and decides it isn’t relevant and it gets pushed down in the rankings.

4. SPEED: this one is actually why I wrote this whole post…

It really is the idea that made me write this at all to begin with.

I realized:

The best marketing has nothing to do with convincing, persuading or talking to people.  It has to do a million times more with matching the right person with the right thing, and as smoothly as possile take away all the obstacles between that person and the check out.  Improvements almost always come from stripping away the irrelevant and unecessary, not from adding tons more stuff.  In some situations this is completely wrong and opposite and should not be trusted under any circumstances.  But usually, it’s true.  Get out of the way so they can buy!”

Speed is the unsung hero of unique and optimal user experience. It’s why google so proudly displays how long it took them to find all the stuff you’re searching for. And it’s why Twitter is 140 characters and dominating the soial media scene right now… It’s why commercials are 30 seconds, why YouTube videos are usually short and why most men despite what theytell you Saturday afteernoon after the 5 hour of college football, would prefer to just eTch the highlights in sports center. (they will never ever admit it but it’s true ladies)

THE WHOLE REASON WE SEARCH IS BECAUSE WE WANT TO SOLVE PROBLEMS OR ACT ON OPPORTUNTIES FAST… Search engines are ultimately about speed.

Is google right or wrong?

Well they are kind of like NASA but with the interneb and computers

“My Astounding And Resounding Answer After Rebelion And Adolescent Defiance”
Yes.

Look I realized that if google just wants what people like, then it’s best to think that way too…

After battling with it and whining and thinking how frustrating it is to get google slaped and they were black balling my industru and after much crying like a baby, I realized that they just want whats best for all three parties.  Website owner, searcher and google.  And actually if you will start to be creative about creating an amazing unique user experience, (which will help you sell more) GOOGLE will actually love you more and give you more traffic.

(P.S. HERE IS GOOGLE BACKING UP WHAT I AM SAYING AND ADDING MORE TO IT: http://www.google.com/corporate/ux.html

Have you ever noticed how quick and to the point and specific each and every page of their help sites are?  Proof, they like specific, short, and spot on.)

The key is to stop thinking you have to be a direct response, mail order- infomercial on a web page.
“BREAK THE FREAKIN RULES AND JOIN THE FREE GIVE THEM WHAT THEY WANT WHEN THEY WANT IT FAST AND GET PAID BILLIONS FOR IT” movement.

NOW COMMENT OR TWEET THIS OR DIGG IT OR SOMETHING SO I KNOW YOU’RE NOT DEAD