What’s my job?
I recently submitted an analysis of a client’s site design spec for search engine marketing issues. In general, the spec was surprisingly good. ‘Surprisingly’ because, normally, SEM is given little, if any, thought in the design process– though that’s changing. Still, this spec mentioned some of my favorite things: separating design from content, semantic HTML, etc.
So, I did my report, praised their good preparation, and suggested a few more things that I thought would help to get this design implemented in a way that didn’t throw up any long-term impediments to the ongoing process of SEM.
The first response that I received from one member of their team was, essentially, “you didn’t say anything about our design. Are there things in our layout that will effect our ranking?”
So, in these cases, what’s my job? I’m presented with a design that someone has obviously given a lot of thought to. The person who brought me in on the job is a smart, experienced marketer. She has clearly considered branding issues in depth to arrive at this design. Is it my job to say “OK, first thing, we need to list your products on the homepage. Let’s expand that nav. Ditch the whitespace for text descriptions…”
I don’t think so. Not everything is about SEM. (Gasp.) I see my job as applying my knowledge in such a way that her vision is implemented in the most search-engine friendly way possible. I have made the comment that, basically, “more text is better.” But, again, if I were to approach Steve Jobs and say “hey, Steve, if you’d lose that big iPhone on the homepage, you could include a paragraph about your products and market segments…” he’d give me that patented Jobs blank look before someone whisked me away.
SEM starts at the beginning. Why are you making the site? Is it more important to be consistent with your identity or to get some more clicks from Google? The best performing sites on the search engines are sometimes the ugliest and least usable.
I’m not about to advise anyone to sacrifice good design, good usability, and well thought out strategy in the interest of moving up the SERP rankings.
That’s not my job.
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