Just Behave: A Principal Goal Of SEO Should Be Customer Loyalty

**A Principal Goal Of SEO Should Be Customer Loyalty**

**by Shari Thurow

**

/td>

Even though search engine optimization (SEO) has been website
marketing strategy for a very long time, many website owners still
believe that the primary goal of SEO is simply to achieve top
positions. If a site is in the #1 position, then SEO is successful,
right?

Perhaps one overlooked benefit of successful SEO is customer loyalty.
I observe this in long-term search behaviors all of the time. When
users/searchers discover a website that contains desired information,
they will often use search engines to go back to that site (refinding
search behavior
<http://searchengineland.com/optimizing-for-re-finding-search-behavior-23025>
). If the website is optimized well, then returning to the site, or a
specific page on a site, is an easy process. Advanced searchers will
often use Google or Bing (or their favorite search engine) to find
specific articles on a site, such as the following:

lung cancer treatment site:www.cancer.gov

When I observed these frequent navigational queries
<http://searchengineland.com/dont-forget-seo-for-navigational-searches-17369>
, I realized that loyalty might be a major benefit of SEO. Google
gullibility <http://www.useit.com/alertbox/user-skills.html>
might be a behavior that SEO professionals rely on to get initial
traffic for websites, but findable content delivered on a
user-friendly website will get searchers to stay on the site and keep
them coming back.

SEO and the System Usability Scale (SUS)

"Search specialists get paid to worry about getting people to a
website through careful selection of words that attract users," said
John Sorflaten <http://www.sorflaten.com/>
, Ph.D, who has designed user experiences using systematic methods
that verify the quality needed for professional results. "There are
additional ways of attracting users, too, one being 'loyalty' to a
company or its website."

One way usability professionals measure customer loyalty is through
the System Usability Scale. Usability professionals use the SUS
questionnaire to determine how well an interface serves its users. The
System Usability Scale questionnaire is a commonly used, freely
distributed, and reliable questionnaire consisting of 10 items.
Scoring the questionnaire yields a usability score in the range of
0–100, its ease of administration and scoring makes it a popular
choice among usability professionals (Finstad 2004 <#finstad>
).

"Substitute the word 'website' for 'system' in the questionnaire
<http://www.busmgt.ulst.ac.uk/business/pi/elaine/Comparison.pdf>
, and it works well for measuring how usability test participants
feel about their web experience" said Sorflaten. "Founders Thomas
S. Tullis and Jacqueline N. Stetson found that the SUS questionnaire
served better than several other popular questionnaires that took
longer to administer."

"Recently, Jeff Sauro <#sauro>
, a buddy who specializes in measuring usability found an interesting
correlation between loyalty to a website and the usability experience
visitors had at a website," Sorflaten continued. "He found that
one third of their 'loyalty' comes from the degree to which people
feel the site is 'usable' as measured with the SUS questionnaire.
For SEO folks, it means that you can include 'loyalty' as an
additional draw for getting people to your clients' sites. So you have
to know techniques of usability to help generate loyalty."

Sauro's research showed that to get loyalty from your site visitors,
your SUS questionnaires needed to have an average score of 80 or above
out of a top score of 100.

"It's nice to see concrete data to back up our interpretations of
SUS scores," said Sorflaten. "To get data, however, you must
interact with real end users with usability testing and
questionnaires. That's usability. No ivory tower assumptions are
allowed when you want to create good websites that get a loyal
following."

Usability and the searcher experience

As an SEO professional, I have long believed that findability is a
critical component of website usability. To me, that means querying
behaviors are just as important as browsing behaviors. In fact, the
two behaviors are inseparable. Web searchers do not simply type a
keyword phrase into a search box, click search, and stop. They scan
search results. They read individual search listings. They want their
user-generated information scents
<http://searchengineland.com/seo-and-the-scent-of-information-26206>
validated in search results and on corresponding websites.

Additionally, customer loyalty can have an effect on a site's
long-term link development. Two sites can have identical or nearly
identical content. Which site do you believe people link to? You
guessed it—the site that is easier to use. I like the System
Usability Scale because it allows us to interact directly with
searchers and makes upper management happy with numbers they can use
and relate to. Understanding how and why searchers interact with
websites tends will generate the best ROI.

Readings on Customer Loyalty

Determining What Individual SUS Scores Mean: Adding an Adjective
Rating Scale
<http://www.usabilityprofessionals.org/upa_publications/jus/2009may/JUS_Bangor_May2009.pdf>

The System Usability Scale and Non-Native English Speakers
<http://216.92.41.4/upa_publications/jus/2006_august/finstad_sus_non_native_speakers.pdf>

Does Better Usability Increase Customer Loyalty: The Net Promoter
Score and the System Usability Scale (SUS)
<http://www.measuringusability.com/usability-loyalty.php>

Wherefore Art Thou O Usability? – Cognitive lock-in to the rescue
<http://www.humanfactors.com/downloads/nov09.asp>

Tips and Tricks for Measuring the User Experience
<http://www.bentley.edu/usability/documents/Albert_Tullis_tips_trix_2008.pdf>

Opinions expressed in the article are those of the author, and not
necessarily Search Engine Land.

Shari Thurow <http://searchengineland.com/author/shari-thurow/>
is the Founder and SEO Director at Omni Marketing Interactive
<http://www.search-usability.com/>
and the author of the book Search Engine Visibility
<http://www.searchenginesbook.com>
.

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