Good Usability and Good SEO should go 'hand in hand’
 
This is something that sounds obvious, but very often is overlooked.  Web design companies are far too often focused primarily on design; without considering SEO and conversion rate performance, along with many other elements that are the key building blocks for your website and online strategy.
 
The mark of a good agency is blending great design and SEO.  Which are both a science and an art.
 
From the initial brief all success factors must be taken into account.  What are the goals of the site (what do you really want to achieve – I bet its more enquiries, more sales, more business!).  By understanding these factors, we then need to consider the core SEO principles and it shouldn’t surprise you that by building an SEO friendly website, your actually drive good usability.
 
Best practice SEO and usability working together:

Many small businesses in the UK are failing to make the most of their online presence, with 47% of SME websites having either very basic or no SEO work at all.

A recent study - the State of UK Business Websites 2010,  looked at 1,001 SME websites and compared them against a range of SEO criteria.  A correlation between the size of a business and the levels of search engine optimisation was the first point found. It seems larger companies tend to have better optimised sites, while over 70% of companies with less than 50 employees have either very basic levels of optimisation, or none at all.

Amazingly, 12% of all business websites are not indexed in any search engine, which almost defeats the purpose of having a website in the first place. Many of the problems are down to businesses not implementing SEO basics. For instance, 35% of websites did not have unique page titles, and 56% lacked unique page descriptions. These are relatively quick SEO wins for small businesses.

Clearly, there are plenty of small businesses that are yet to see the value of effective SEO, or perhaps lack the knowledge to carry out the basics of site optimisation. These businesses should be looking to correct this as, implemented well, SEO has the potential to be a very important and cost-effective sales tool.

Whilst not every company will have the resources or know-how to run an effective campaign, simply getting the basics right, such as ensuring that a site can be indexed and contains relevant content, can make a noticeable difference to search results.

It looks as though search is about to enter a new era as it begins to mix into social media. Search engines have already attempted to place some kind of ranking on social updates and we already know that search engines take things like follower quality into account in how they rank tweets.

Now there is a lot of talk of Facebook "likes" and Twitter retweets taking the place of links. Not that they’re dying out – there's plenty of room for link sharing on either of these services, but in some ways these kinds of sharing are replacing links in many cases.

With Facebook's Open Graph and social plugins devouring the web, suddenly liking is taking the place of linking in some provisional scenarios.

While I don’t think anyone specifically saw the Open Graph stuff coming too long before it was announced, it's still reflective of what we've known for some time. The way people are obtaining information online is diversifying. Google's real competition isn't coming from other search engines. It's coming from different avenues of information access.

The biggest threat to Google the search engine (as opposed to the company, which offers a lot more) is people not having to rely on the traditional search engine. While I don't think Google has anything to truly worry about in terms of losing users, it has to worry more about users just not using it as often. Instead they're getting their information from apps, from friends via social networks and even when they're not necessarily at Facebook but on a site or app, via things like social plug-ins.

Here are 5 reasons Google and Search might not dominate the next decade:

    1. The search process is inefficient
    2. Mobile GPS Eliminates the need for location-based search
    3. Social Matching Could Create Valuable Connections
    4. Content Recommendations to Replace Search
    5. Suggestions Will Be the Core of Our Shopping Experience

On a not so negative note, Facebook likes may not translate to better Google rankings, but so what? It's not about choosing between likes and links. Both are ideal.

The point of all of this is it's not just about getting links anymore. Links will always be of use, but social interactions may equal them in importance, and in some cases may be of greater use to your visibility, and ultimately getting people to your site, your content, your store, or your shopping cart.

SeeWhy has released an eBook which looks at how the top 10 converting e-commerce sites convert almost 10 times as many visitors into customers than the typical site — 23% vs. 2.3%.

You may be surprised to hear than the strategies employed by these top-converting sites don't necessarily reflect conventional wisdom of how to increase conversions. Those who studied the sites, were admittedly expecting to find short shopping cart processes, guest checkouts, and highly tuned websites focused around getting the sale. But they didn’t…

Instead, they found companies focused on lifetime customer value, choosing to offer shoppers a superior shopping experience to make it more likely they’ll purchase from them again. In fact companies were willing to sacrifice a small proportion of initial sales in order to capture user data. Because once captured, they use details very effectively to remarket to website visitors, driving highly qualified buyers with intent to their sites.

Conventional ideas emphasise the importance of SEO, streamlined conversion and reducing the steps to the shopping cart in order to optimise your conversion rate. But the top 10 conversion leaders don't care about one night stands; they want long term relationships.

This is why they convert about 10 times as many visitors as the average ecommerce site. Their secret, quite simply, is to focus on long-term relationships with customers.

So should we throw out this conventional wisdom? There’s probably no need to be that drastic. Instead, a better strategy would be to build upon that conventional wisdom with strategies that are successful for these other sites. There’s nothing stopping you having a long-term commitment and one-night stands.

Are you looking for a new way to boost your search results? Well, now that results are comprised of all kinds of content, why not consider boosting your SEO by creating a YouTube channel? Every video you post to your channel can be tagged and indexed, increasing the odds of your brand name appearing in natural searches for keywords associated with your business.

The best thing is that creating your own channel is pretty simple so here are four easy steps to kick things off:

1.  Choose Your Topics

A lot of people will want to watch a video about your company, but they won’t want to watch a commercial about your products. People appreciate informative or entertaining videos about your products that illustrate how to choose the ones for their needs, how to use or fix them, and what special features are available.

Also consider what expertise you can offer beyond your products. Whatever business you're in, you're probably an expert at what you do, so share your knowledge. For example:  If you sell clothes, record videos showing how you choose your merchandise, interview local designers or even create how-to videos on coordinating outfits.

With a bit of creative thinking, you can come up with some really interesting ideas that would be a perfect fit for a regular or even semi-regular video series.

2. Record Your Videos

Once you come up with ideas, you're ready to record. You can use any high-quality consumer-level camera, don’t worry about hiring a professional videographer - in fact, your videos looking “home made” will just increase the viral appeal and makes them look less like commercials.

Before you record your video, make a bullet list of 5-10 points to talk about and keep the edited recording less than two minutes. At both the start and end of the video, it's OK to plug your website or business. Make sure to always include a link to your website in the video, which will deliver viewers from YouTube to your product pages.

3. Optimise for VSEO

After you've uploaded your video to YouTube, you'll be asked to enter a title, description and tags. This is where VSEO begins.

Let’s say your company sells cupcakes and you just recorded and uploaded a video about "birthday cupcakes." You’ll want to use the phrase in the title twice to maximize SEO impact –- once at the front and once at the end, like this: "Birthday Cupcakes: How to make Birthday Cupcakes."

For the video description you’ll need to include a link at the front of the description back to your website, followed by a carefully crafted paragraph around your key phrase. Remember to use lots of supporting words that give context to your video.

Finally, for tags, repeat your key phrase and common variants. Similar to website SEO, stick to 10-15 phrases. For phrases with more than one word, make sure you enclose them in double quotes.

4. Build a Base of Viewers

You can begin to "seed" your video beyond posting links on Facebook and Twitter.

One idea is to post your content as a "video reply" to other related videos. This gives YouTube context as to what your video is about and starts a steady flow of traffic. To do this, search YouTube for the exact phrase you want to rank for and post your new video as a "video reply" to those that come up.

Next, start building links back to your video. The best way to do this is to find out who is linking back to the most popular videos in your category, searching for that URL in Google to see where it appears, and then reaching out to these sites to ask them to link to your videos.

1.       Create a simple, clean website that includes keywords about your business so that people looking for your products or services can find you easily.

2.       List your business on all free directory sites available to you: Google Local Business Centre, Yahoo! Local, Yelp, YellowPages.com, and SuperPages. These are just some of the online business directory services that allow you to create a free listing. Add details such as your company website URL, a map, phone numbers, or business hours.

3.       An email newsletter is a great way to connect with your loyal customers. Create an email that includes a quick update on new products or services, and perhaps a printable coupon or promotional code. You can also add an image, a link to your website or a video you’ve posted on YouTube.

4.       Social networking is here to stay, so your company needs to get involved. Start by creating a Facebook business page and a Twitter account in your company’s name; both are free. If you have video content about your business, create a free “video channel” on YouTube. Encourage your customers to sign up for your pages by printing your Facebook address and Twitter handle on all your marketing materials.

5.       Try offering different types of promotions: downloadable and printable coupons that people can bring in to your shop or office, a 10%-off coupon for signing up for your email newsletter or a refer-a-friend discount to be redeemed online. You can promote these discounts via your email newsletter, in-store banners, Twitter, and Facebook.

6.       Use Google, Twitter, Facebook, and other search engines to find similar businesses in your city and in other areas to see what marketing tricks your competitors are using. Check out their social networking pages, websites and latest promotions. Sign up for their email newsletters. You’ll be able to see what’s worked for companies you admire, and fine-tune your own marketing strategies to compete with them.

7.       There are many sites where experts can provide answers to people asking questions: Yahoo Answers and LinkedIn Answers are some of the most popular. Search all of these sites for questions related to your business or service expertise, and then provide answers to them. Offer thoughtful, expert advice people can really use; that’s great PR for your business.

8.       Most people prefer to 'see' something rather than 'read' something – so create some videos for your business! Create simple marketing videos for free then add your company’s URL, phone number and address. Post your videos on your Facebook Page and on YouTube, and use them on your website and in your email marketing campaigns.

There are two main categories in marketing: Push and Pull.

Push marketing is basically when you push your marketing message on someone when they’re in the middle of something else such as driving a car, watching television or browsing the Internet.You may have heard this otherwise called ‘interruption marketing’ and you probably know exactly what I mean. Well, here’s a question for you; how do you feel when you favourite television show is interrupted by an advert for washing up liquid? Pretty annoyed I bet.

So it probably won’t surprise you when I tell you that the best way to increase your conversion rate is NOT through push marketing but through pull marketing.

Pull marketing is about putting your message in front of those who are actively seeking the products or services you offer. If they’re already looking for what you do, then this gives the perfect opportunity to solve their problems and meet their needs.

Some of the most common pull marketing tactics include:

•    Search engine optimisation
•    Pay-per-click
•    Social media sites
•    Newsletters
•    Tradeshows
•    Public speaking
•    Blogging
•    Strategic networking

In general, there’s a lower ROI associated with push marketing. You’ll get far fewer clients for every pound you spend and it requires more effort.

Pull marketing, on the other hand, is very targeted. It gets your message in front of your ideal clients, and it presents your business as the solution to problems that people are actively seeking help with. That’s why pull marketing has such a high conversion rate. It attracts more clients, and it takes much less effort.

Has it ever occurred to you that you may have keywords on your site that mislead search engines? Have you ever thought about the different meanings of the keywords you are trying to rank for?

Now that Google is delivering more personalisation in search results, there is much more to understanding search behaviour, intent-based search, and how that should affect keyword research. You need to be taking into consideration things like how prior queries influence future queries.  

If you sell telephones, you have to actively go out of your way to ensure you don’t have certain things appearing in your site otherwise the search engines could get confused about what you’re talking about.

One of the most important things is work out is how to do keyword research without knowing the behavioural aspects of people actually looking for your product. The focus needs to be on these personas - what kinds of things are they likely to search on, in sequence - before they type in telephone. If you understand that behaviour in sequence, then the better you can do your keyword research and determine how you’re going to put the words on your page.

Personalised search is nothing new as Google has been personalising search results for some time. It just now appears that Google is looking for more ways to deliver users a personalised experience.

Let me introduce you to someone in our office… Siân. When Siân shops, she knows what she shops for. She types into Google... red shoes, high heel, size 5. When your site pops up, she clicks onto your site, ready to buy. Then you go and make the stupendous mistake of landing her into a page about handbags. Confused and disappointed, Siân clicks straight off your site and into your competitors, making a mental note never to visit your company again.

High street retailers, Next, noticed that they had a high exit rate from search pages for boys socks and they found that by testing more specific results, they reduced exit rates by 20% and increased conversions by 7%. Therefore if you had landed Siân into your shoe section you would have at least been on the right track, but if you had landed Siân into a page featuring high-heel red shoes size 5, then you too could reduce your exit rate and increase your conversions too.

Top tips for site search:

1. Check quality of results: Is your site’s search function working well? Ensure visitors are getting relevant results, even when they search on synonyms or misspellings.
2. Make site search visible: Visitors to your site should be able to see, at a glance, where to search. Consider enlarging your search box or making it more prominent.
   
3. Allow customers to sort results: People like to be able to sort through search results. Allow visitors to order what they see by anything from price or popularity to colour, style etc.
4. Lay out search results clearly: Ensure visitors can glance through search results and compare listings easily to decide where to click next.

You may be wondering why keyword research is so important and why it has such an impact on your website’s success. Well, keyword research is an essential process that needs to be applied for you to promote your business properly online and to make sure the right customers find you.

There are a number of different Keyword Research Tools out there that you can use to find out your most competitive search terms and search terms that you are more likely to rank for. I recommend that you use the keyword tool called Google Adwords. It is simple to use and gives you a clear list of relevant keywords that are related to the search terms that you are looking for; it also shows you the advertiser competition for that keyword term and the search volume for the previous month and the average searches per month.  Google Adwords also allows you to download the keywords onto an Excel Spreadsheet which give you the option of managing the keywords and choosing the best keywords for you to use on your website. Therefore this is an extremely useful tool and can prove to be highly beneficial to your website.

The main objective of your website is to rank high in the major search engines; and the reason for this is to provide your business with much more online traffic which will, in turn, achieve a boost for your business. And to rank high on search engines, having the correct keywords that are most relevant to your business is of upmost importance.

There are many websites out there that have great products and content but eventually fail because of the incorrect or unpopular keywords that are used throughout the site; this means that their potential customers will struggle to find them because they would be ranking for the wrong keywords. This means that you need to do the correct research and make sure that your keywords are related to your website/business and make sure that your content is original and easy to read which will help you be found by your potential visitors on search engines.

So, in conclusion, and to answer the original question, keyword research is so important because it helps your business to succeed on the World Wide Web and helps your potential customers to find your website through the world renowned search engines.

Keyword Research is the key to success, follow these tips and you will have the online traffic your company needs for success!