For years now, my friend Matt has been saying that search engine marketing and usability are so intricately tied that they might as well be part of the same process. Turns out he's not the only one that believes this...as demonstrated by an excellent article by Gerry McGoldrick over at Adotas.

In the article, McGoldrick talks about the intricate ways in which search, usability and analytics can all be woven together to create an entirely new way of looking at, and marketing, a web site.

From the article:

A great example of this bigger picture occurred while our analytics team was working with search to develop and measure keyword categories. Analytics took the keyword list selected for optimization and created logical groups. By looking at keyword groups, the team built customer segments that provided greater insight into behavior. Now, we are able to track the popularity of searches within keyword groups to see the effect of business cycles, news and promotion on search behavior. We can also track conversion by keyword group to better understand how our client’s site meets the needs of different audiences.

The article is heavy on the "big picture" concept, but does a great job of explaining the tie-ins without getting bogged down in tech talk and marketing talk. Basically, the article is full of some good old fashioned common sense, something sorely lacking in the arsenal of many modern marketing consultants.