The response in the SEO community has been to tell web designers to modify the links used on each page in your site, often to extremes. For example, Scott Smigler says we should remove site-wide navigation on sections like product listings.

This is where I get upset.

Web site design is first and foremost about usability. If people get frustrated with navigation and their ability to quickly get to the information they want, all the SEO tweaking in the world won’t help your site.

Navigation is a very sensitive issue. You can’t remove site-wide navigation from any page on your site, regardless of how important you think that might be for search engine optimization. This navigation acts as a road map, guiding people through the site. It must be consistent at all times. There is no other option! Studies since the web began have pointed out the importance of consistent site-wide navigation in user satisfaction. Even as people have become more familiar with the web and have taken some things for granted, this dependence on consistent navigation has, if anything, become even more critical. Competitor’s web sites are just a mouse click away. You can’t afford to frustrate or annoy your visitors.

To be fair to Scott, whom I respect, he does say that it might not work. I’ll go further than that and say this solution can’t work. It’s so bad that it has no place on the list.

I’ve encountered this kind of aggressive off-the-hip tactic before, and it was ugly. When a Google loophole allowed page ranking to be increased by using keywords in image file names as well as “alt” tags, an SEO consulting firm talked one of my clients into letting them optimize the website. The result was an unholy mess, in which every image file name and “alt” tag became a long, cryptic flow of keywords. Not only was it unmanageable from a web design standpoint, but it was unusable for visually impaired people. As they would mouse around any page on the 1100-page site using the aural navigation tools, they would hear long nonsense sequences of hyphenated words that made no sense at all. Changing this later took dozens of hours of unnecessary work.

Allowing an SEO tactic like this to be employed at the expense of navigation reality is no different from people who ignore other realities of marketing communication. I recall one young art director showing me a brochure he had created. He was sure it would win awards, because it was so “creative.” Unfortunately, it ignored the realities of usability. The entire brochure was printed with nothing more than high gloss varnish on a solid black background. To read any of the copy, you had to hold the pages just so in the light, moving the paper so that each new line would catch the light. I asked him, “How many prospective customers do you think will take the time and effort to read this?” He hadn’t thought about it that way.

SEO is a science, and deserves respect from the marketing community. At the same time, we need to be careful to understand that online communication is a symbiotic relationship between a number of expert elements. SEO is only one of them. Another element is usability and navigation. Equally important are graphic design and the science of eye flow. Still another is copywriting. We should never take any one of those elements by itself and place it on a pedestal, looking down on all the others. You can’t sacrifice any one of them and still have an effective end result.

Problems exist in SEO and we’ll have more of them down the road. It’s nasty out there, with unscrupulous players making things more challenging for everyone else as the search engines try to maintain order. But sudden, extreme solutions cause more harm than good. Clients will hear about them and make demands that end up being unreasonable and unworkable. Let’s have clear, meaningful dialog with all the parties to make sure that we build truly successful web sites for our clients.

What do you think? Post your comments below.

“At first, it was pure passion,” she whispered with a silky voice I was still getting used to, her sapphire-blue eyes flashing in the shadows. She leaned forward, glancing around before continuing. “I couldn’t help myself,” she added lustily. “I’d never experienced anything like it. Nothing else mattered. I just wanted more and more of the same.”

Her face slid back into shadow. Silence, except for a sultry jazz tune working its way from table to table as I pondered her confession. Blue smoke curled slowly in the air like the lazy circles she made with her finger in blonde locks flowing to her shoulders.

“How long did it last?” I asked. Her eyes drifted away, remembering, then came back to mine.

“It was a couple of years until the magic stopped. After a while I realized my needs were no longer being met. Now I was more concerned about time. I wanted it faster.”

“Faster?”

“Faster or not at all,” she responded. “Ten seconds or less was the magic number for me now. It began to feel so superficial. Meaningless. Maybe I just got bored, but it no longer seemed to be about satisfying my needs. It was just motion and sound for the sake of entertainment.” She downed the rest of her drink in a single gulp. I waved for another round.

I was investigating the disappearance of web animation. What had once been proclaimed the future of advertising on the Internet was now a mere shadow of it’s original promise. It had all but disappeared from the landscape, especially from corporate or brand-related web sites. Yet there were few answers. Flash designers didn’t think anything had changed. Corporate marketing types didn’t want to talk about it. Nobody wanted to share their experience, or were too busy to give it much thought. Then I found her, someone who valued the ability to interact directly with the brands that mattered to her. We had met in the rain outside the bar and went in without a word spoken.

“I began to resent splash screens and animated intros,” she sighed, leaning back against the hard wooden frame of her chair and twirling a plastic swizzle stick between her fingers. “They no longer seemed honest,” she explained. “All that razzle dazzle. It was too often manipulative. It took extra time and seldom added anything of value to our relationship.”

“I no longer cared,” she said. “We saw less and less of each other. I thought the relationship was over. All that mattered was the information. I wanted it fast and simple. Flash was dead for me. Forgotten.”

She suddenly leaned forward and gripped my arm. Hard. Almost hard enough to hurt. “But I was wrong,” she exclaimed passionately. “It’s back!”

That got my attention. She must have noticed the look in my eyes. When she spoke again, her voice was barely a whisper. I strained to hear.

“Flash MX,” she gasped.

A computer monitor throbbed in the corner. She continued. “Just when I thought life was returning to normal, it’s starting again. Flash is back. Now with video. And an application architecture that can give me everything I ever dreamed of in a brand relationship. More interactivity. Database management. All combined with the motion and streaming audio that started it all.”

Flash MX. So Flash wasn’t gone after all, I realized. Just the victim of inappropriate use. Instead of using its power to provide an experience that mattered to the audience, Flash had typically been used as a self-serving instrument that wasted people’s time offering nothing of value in return for their patience. Flash revived. Would it now be used the way it should have been all along? Would it truly enhance the brand experience? Would it make the experience worthy of the extra download time? What would the future hold?

A saxophone wailed its plaintive notes as a drop of condensation slowly traced its way down the side of her glass. Her blue eyes pierced mine, the same question deep within. Have marketers learned? Will it be different this time? Outside the rain slapped at the windows with streaky wet fingers. The waitress brought a new drink.

Many online sales channels are simply cannibalizing offline sales. In 2005, a study showed that only 6.5% was actual incremental sales. At the same time, five times as many young people were going online to make their purchasing decision than were doing so just five years earlier. 70% of all purchasers go online to conduct buying research. In one study from 2002, a staggering 12% indicated that they switched brands purely because of what they learned online. This is unheard of in traditional media!

What does all this mean? It means that what you communicate matters more than the media you use.

Instead of using your site to scream at people to BUY, BUY, BUY! you should be using it to talk to them, educate them, and tell them more about your company or products. The sales will come as a result, especially if your site becomes a trusted source of meaningful information. These same principles apply to social media, as these channels are even more influential as a form of educational interaction with customers.

Relationship marketing may be a buzzword that’s been overused in the past couple of years, but it is a valid concept and works very well online when done right. Those who engage in a digital RM program show more than 600% increase in conversion to purchase when compared to traditional RM relationship marketing programs. The web is an information place and should be used as an information source. People expect it.

Many CEOs who spend hours working on their brand message have no idea of the value of their brand when people actually type the band name into a browser’s address bar. People come to your web site, or sign up as a Facebook fan, with a genuine desire to interact with your brand. How much better can it get?

The single biggest advantage of the internet is the ability to educate your target audience. Think about how this compares to other media. This is almost impossible with a television commercial.

Invite your audience

On the web, sites are most successful when they invite people, treating them like intelligent beings who can make their own decisions. You never shove stuff down their throats. This doesn’t mean you can’t be aggressive. Mercedes only allowed people to get info about the C class online. There was no other way to get information during the pre-marketing process. But the web can appear to be disrespectful more quickly than other media, so you have to be warmer and more gentle in your approach.

Once you invite, you have to engage your audience or you’ll effectively kill your brand. If you invite them to a party, make sure a party is what they find. Competitors are one click away, and if they do things right while you don’t, chances are very slim that the online audience will give your site another opportunity in the future.

Treat people like, ah, people

Give your audience the facts they need to compare. You can’t be successful online without providing real information. There are never enough facts! Find things you can point to, like independent third party comparisons. Allow people to sign up for news or to join membership programs. They want you to assist them in making a purchase, and things that make them feel like insiders to information not available elsewhere works wonders. Mercedes dealers allow people to register online for a test drive, indicating ahead of time what kind of car they wanted to test. This allowed the dealers to be fully prepared. But with 3000 daily requests for a test drive, responding efficiently can be a challenge. You can’t delay. Dealers who didn’t respond in 48 hour lost their status as an online retail link. Nike ID was actively used as a test bed for future shoe designs. It wasn’t meant not to make a profit online, but as a research tool.

Getting to yes

All of this leads to the transaction. The interesting thing is that while 95% of all purchases are still made offline, those customers have already made their decision online because they’re empowered by what the web offers them in terms of information. Automobile companies like Mercedes have found that customers no longer ask any questions from salespeople. They walk into the dealership already knowing as much or more about the cars than the people who work there. They’ve been empowered by e-communications.

Defend your brand with conviction

If you know that 70% of your customers are making their buying decision online then why is your online budget only 3%? You can’t expect to have a successful site if you don’t support it. The best companies spends at least 10% of their marketing budget in online initiatives. Non-tactile products are easier to sell online, but the principles are the same.

Your customers are friends

In the past, we called them the “target market.” Then we called them customers. Today, you have to call them friends. That means you have to treat them as friends. E-Communications means carrying on a two-way dialog. Feedback channels are critical. Being respectful of even the most critical comments goes without saying. Don’t sweat it so much when people bad mouth you, because they were always doing that, just not so directly in your face. This happens in friendships. It’s the result of people who care enough to let you know when you let them down. Listen and respond.

Don’t be so bent on building an online store. Instead, focus on building an online community if you want to watch the sales climb.

Come close. Closer. No, much closer. I need to whisper something in your ear.

“I hear web pages.”

They call out, crying for someone to really tell their story. Lost in the teeming, muted crowd, web pages yearn to be heard.

Despite all the advances we’ve made in browser technology and bandwidth, the vast majority of web sites stand silently, with no aural character helping define the brands they represent. Some sites have been abused in this area, screaming and shrieking with a cacophony of irrelevant noise. Most are voiceless messengers, muzzled by their creators. Very few even attempt to use the incredible human sense of hearing. Fortunately, that’s starting to change. Good use of audio on the web is increasing exponentially and marketing professionals need to listen.

How valuable is audio in communication?

• “Frankly my dear, I don’t give a damn.”
• “Oh, the humanity!”
• “We shall never surrender.”
• “I have a dream.”
• “That’s one small step for a man, one giant leap for mankind.”

You probably remember those voices even more vividly than the images that go with them. The inflections, the nuances that burned those quotes into the hearts of millions around the world touched each of us emotionally. Music too has an unmistakable impact. Think of the haunting melody of Lara’s theme. Or farmer Tevye heartily crooning “if I were a rich man.” How many can still correctly chant all the lyrics to the jingle “two all beef patties…”? Ask around. You’ll be surprised.

Motion pictures have long understood the power of sound as a communication tool. So it’s no wonder that movie web sites are among those using audio exceptionally well. Visit the high-bandwidth Pearl Harbor web site and view the video clip of survivor Richard Fisk (or watch it on the DVD). Listen to the score swell in the background as he chokes up describing what he felt. If you aren’t deeply moved then perhaps your skepticism quotient is over-developed.

Web sites are bending audio to experience in a number of effective ways.

Some provide a subtle background of emotional support for the branding message. An early version of the Toronto Eaton Centre shopping mall’s web site featured a very soft yet surprisingly powerful background loop of shoppers in a mall. Though little more than shuffling feet and murmured voices, it set a dramatic foundation for the brand. This approach is the most difficult to produce as it can become an irritant. Done right, people enjoy it even in quiet office settings.

Another use of online audio is through clips or soundtracks such as jingles, radio-style commercials, or introductory scores. These must be used carefully and need an outlet valve, the ability to control volume or turn off the audio. People won’t spend any time interacting with your brand if your commercial loudly intrudes into their quiet working space. Many sites are taking their cues for handling this audio technique from the motion picture industry. Also effective are brand-related online games, complete with sound effects. Splashworks.com has an entire line of games that can be customized to match your brand personality.

Although web audio is a relatively new frontier, it won’t end with computer-based web browsers. As wireless technologies grow, we’ll see expanded use of audio in marketing. After all, the phone was designed as an aural interaction medium. People expect to use it for voice communication. High-bandwidth handheld access will bring the ability to hear the weather forecast instead of viewing it on screen, along with a brief radio commercial by the sponsor. Voice-to-text translation of your menu commands will let you simply talk into your phone as menu choices are given verbally. Eventually we may carry on live two-way marketing conversations through our computers. Won’t that open up new advertising possibilities? Imagine a customized online game show where the audience — gathered before an interactive television set — shouts answers to trivia questions directly related to your brand.

Web pages are starting to talk. They need your help knowing what to say.