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Good search optimization practices don't just make a site friendlier to the engines. SES San Jose panelists discussed how good SEO works wonders for human visitors, too. (Our on-scene WebProNews staff has passed along this latest news from SES San Jose 2007. If you can't be there, you need to be here with WebProNews this week, for videos and reports.)

Shari Thurow of Omni Marketing Interactive said website usability serves two purposes: relevancy and encouraging clicks to a site. That's also what site publishers want to see happen when people search for terms related to their websites.

The buzzword "scent" has been mentioned in other sessions, and Thurow used it as well in describing the cues on a website. Textual and graphical content provides cues to people. Those cues help in search usability, helping a site index optimally.

Matt Bailey of Site Logic Marketing encouraged better usability on sites. Done properly, these improvements lead people to a site. Better rankings and higher conversions generally follow.

Home pages should show people what they want and why they are there. The same goes for landing pages. Arriving visitors have expectations based on what brought them to the home page or the landing page; they shouldn't have to wonder what to do next. That visitor wants to be a conversion.