Web Usability, Experience and SEO Blog

» New Home Page for HP.com now available to everyone.

Posted by : Nandini Nayak, Director, HP.com Site Design & Research

I am glad to see some talk on the blog circuit regarding HP’s new US Home page which went into full production earlier this month. There are those who critique us from a visual perspective and attempt to “date” us as if this was about a fashion trend, others give us more credit for trying something new. As usability practitioners, we cannot design by random opinion, we have to let the data speak for itself.

» Google Site Search

» SEM, SEO, and On-Site Search Collaboration

Michael Martinez recognized that this idea could be extended to a formal process:

» Hiring In-house SEOs and SEO Agencies

» Search day at eTail 2008 in Palm Springs

Posted by:  Laura Dansbury, Global Hp.com On-site Search Program Manager

Tanya, Vicqui Chan from the HHO store, and I recently attended the first day of eTail 2008 together. We presented the afternoon panel discussion on the 3 pillars of Search: SEO, Paid Search, and On-site Search. It was a great experience for all of us. We are all on different teams. And we would not normally attend a conference together even if we were for cost-savings reasons. But I think the best learning experiences at conferences come from the hallway conversations with peers and coworkers between presentations. We tend to think it is wasteful to send more than one person to an event per team. But I think it is wasteful to ignore the insights and inspirations that occur when people facing the same challenges step away from the office and try to see the bigger picture at the same time! It also ignores the benefits of teambuilding and opportunities to discover new resources.

» Landing Pages - SEO vs SEM?

» Google Sitelinks-Why Won’t Google Let Us Designate Sitelinks for Our Domains?

Posted by: Tanya Vaughan, Global SEO Program Manager, HP.com

Has anyone else tried using the Google Sitelinks feature in Google Webmaster Tools? I love the idea of it and as soon as I heard about it of course I ran out and submitted my requested edits to update the HP.com sitelinks to what we feel would be a better customer experience – not just for HP customers but for Google customers as well. At HP, we know what portions of our web site are the most popular and what make the most sense to provide in a consolidated search result for someone looking for HP on the web so I was eager to give Google my input. Unfortunately they only wanted to hear half of what I had to say.

» An updated home page design for HP.com!

» Yahoo!'s Dynamic URL Rewrite

» PubCon 2007 in Las Vegas

I’m finally getting around to blog about my experience at PubCon – catching up after nearly a week out of the office is rough! But now that I have a moment to reflect (and I’ve had some time to recover from several days in Vegas!) I’m ready to share my experience.

» Why I’m planning to attend PubCon instead of SES Chicago in December

As most of you search geeks know, SES Chicago and WebMaster World’s PubCon are occurring at the same time this year – the first week of December. A lot of us on the In-House Committee of SEMPO were conversing about who was going to which conference and why. I’ve decided to go to PubCon over SES… 

» Google’s New “Set Geographic Target” Tool – Close but Not Quite…

I have to admit, when I got the notice from Vanessa Fox (previous Google Webmaster Tools product manager) about the ability to tell Google my preferred geographic location, I was ecstatic! This has been a challenge I’ve been trying to address for some time both directly (to the extent I can get any Google facetime) and indirectly through blog posts about International Web Content and Search Engines and pestering of Google personnel. Unfortunately the recent addition of the “Set geographic target” feature in the Webmaster Tools doesn’t quite work for many global web sites. 

» SEMPO Launches In-House Salary Survey for Search Engine Marketing (SEM) and Optimization (SEO) Professionals

Posted by: Tanya Vaughan, Global SEO Manager, HP.com

Many companies are considering bringing search marketing in house, whether it be to manage strategy and vendors or managinng the campaigns in their entirety.  One factor in making this decision is what to pay different levels of SEO and SEM search marketing professionals to ensure you get the best candidate.  Since SEO and SEM are relatively new professions, it's a little more challenging to understand the market value of these professionals.

» Bringing Search Marketing In House

Posted by Tanya Vaughan, Global SEO Manager, HP.com

Search Marketing – should you bring it in house or should you outsource it? If you do bring it in house, what’s the best way to go about it? Do you train or hire experienced search marketers? The latter certainly aren’t easy to come by and even if you do there’s no guarantee they’ll stick around given the industry is short in these resources right now.

This is always a topic of discussion at the search conferences and within blogs and articles across the web.

» Universal Search and Ask3D – What Blended Search Models Mean to Marketers