Building Trust Between SEO & IA

July 21, 2008 |

AS A MEMBER of the the Information Architecture Institute I sometimes get a plethora of emails about various topics such as wire frames, poly hierarchies, duplicate website content and other IA and SEO related subject matter. Last week an email was set out to the distribution list from Jenny Wallace who is currently working on her Master thesis titled "How Search Engine Optimization and Information Architecture can build a reciprocal trust relationship between information providers and information consumers ". As my recent post about change management, resistance and trust with the Online Marketing Industry may suggest, the topic of trust and relationships between teams, departments or suppliers and customers is one that fascinates me.

The best part, and sometimes the overbearing part too, is that some of the emails sent to the distribution list generate a lot of response from IA/UX experts from around the world. And every so often a response comes through like the one I am about to share with you now.

In response to Jenny’s request Steve Baty , UX expert and Management Consultant for Meld Consulting in Australia , offered the sound and thorough advice about building trust between teams and their responsibility to the user/customer. Full transcript of Jenny’s question and Steve’s response follow:

Hi All,

I’m finishing up my masters in Interaction Design and Information Architecture at the Univ. of Baltimore, and I wanted some IA input on my topic: How Search Engine Optimization and Information Architecture can build a reciprocal trust relationship between information providers and information consumers. Any thoughts?

Thanks,

Jenny Wallace

Jenny,

I think that’s a fantastic these topic and I wish you well during this difficult time of finalising it for submission.

The notion of trust in this relationship is primarily one - to my mind - of meeting expectations for the information consumers. The consumer will, frequently, land on a page deep into the site content hierarchy and will immediately begin assessing the page for relevancy based on the high-level content labels presented to them. This is clearly where a partnership is most strongly required between IA and SEO practitioners, so that the visually-dominant labels (headings, titles, sub-headings, bold terms etc) are closely aligned to the original search terms that brought the consumer to the site in the first place.

Trust online is a highly fragile thing, and visitors to a site - particularly when originating within a search engine - will be twitchy to begin, so it is imperative that relevance is established quickly, clearly and unambiguously. It should be the case that the higher-level content labels are the ones most closely tied to the search terms - and it’s here that the semantic structure of the HTML comes to the fore.

It is also important to recognise the conflict inherent in the relationship between SEO and IA. Although the goal of SEO should be to attract pre-qualified potential consumers to site, quite often this is interpreted to mean "attract as many people as possible". For the IA, this represents a real conflict of interest: they’re being tasked with structuring site content to suit the needs of an audience who - by rights - should never be considered in the information architecture.

And it is here that trust can be destroyed very, very quickly: SEO tactics that are designed to draw in visitors with only a very tenuous interest in the actual product or service on offer; and those visitors being presented with content that has little or no relevance to their needs.

One last point: the information architecture strategy for a site must explicitly accommodate visitor behaviour that does not initiate on the home page. Each and every page must provide the sort of context and relevancy triggers for the visitor so that they can not only decide to continue their journey on the site, but also can see clearly how to commence that journey.

Once again - good luck with your thesis.

Steve

Now I know enough about SEO to be dangerous and I know even less about IA but I do know that trust largely translates into quality. If a user trusts that what your website has to offer is what it is they want, in the mind of that user your website has a certain level of quality that they desire. Factor in additional characteristics beyond a relevant landing page like product or service selection, ease of site navigation, simple checkout or contact process and that ‘quality score’ increases dramatically. So in many ways, as Steve suggests, its not only trust but also relevance that is a major contributor to the quality of a website that will ultimately turn users into life-time customers. It is this common goal where both SEO & IA should focus to design and implement the best user experience possible.

Trust in the Little Things
Online Marketing Quality: I Know It When I See It

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