Kim is a usability expert and the founder of cre8asiteforums - an invalueable resource for any web developer that attracts some of the smartest web proffesionals around!

Name: Kim Krause Berg
Aliases: cre8pc
Single or Married: Married
Kids: Two, one step-son (3 altogether)
Home Site: cre8asiteforums, Usability Effect, cre8pc
Memberships: cre8asiteforums, Usability Professionals, Pennridge
Contact info: cre8pc@gmail.com

How did you get into SEO?

Self-taught. I needed to know it for my job in 1996 and ended up getting to be very good at it. I began to teach SEO and by 1998 had a club/group in Yahoo to reach more people who wanted to learn more about it.

What other areas do you specialize in? How do they compliment your SEO efforts?

• Usability
• Software testing (online applications)

I realized, while testing web sites and applications in the QA field, that sometimes the focus was more on the back-end, which meant sacrificing search engine rank and (back then) submissions. I decided to find ways for work arounds and complimentary efforts.

Any favorite projects you’d like to share?

In Usability testing, there are too many to name. I love to support my clients. In SEO, I got a kick out of being hired to work on competing sites. (The site owners each knew I was doing the SEO for their competitor and loved the challenge.)

What part of SEO drives you nuts?

When search companies started charging for each page or site submitted, the thrill of SEO was gone after that (for me).

What’s your favorite part of SEO?

Organic content changes that can be seen and tested over time.

Where do you see SEO going over the next 5 years?

It will become even more meshed in with marketing and advertising. Can you optimize sound and video, or make images rank? That’s next. Hand held devices will need responsive engines as the population gets more mobile.

Any favorite tips or advice?

Design for people, not robots. People have the credit cards.

Cre8asiteforums brings together some of the web’s most brilliant and creative minds.

How has SEO benefited you the most?

Personally, it launched a change in careers by actually giving me one I loved working in. SEO put me on the map.

What industries do you work in?

All of them. I do a lot of real estate and travel sites, as well as businesses who are trying to ramp up old style designs to recharge conversions.

Do you take jobs or just work privately?

I work with Partners and I’m hired privately. I also work for “silent partners”, which are companies who sub-contract me and I act like one of their own employees. Most of my Partners are SEO’s and marketers who no longer just do basic SEO. They won’t take on a site unless it will convert after they work so hard prepping it for search engines. I also work for people who design sites and landing pages too.

What is your SEO Philosophy?

SEO without user centered design won’t last for the long haul. SEO alone (or more like SEM) efforts bring a site to the starting gate, but not to the finish line. Sooner or later they will need usability and user testing.

Your bio states "Today I specialize in the relationship between Search Engine Optimization, User Interface and Usability." Is there really a relationship between SEO and Usability?

There always has been. I think I saw it earlier than most. It’s performance based results that SEO’s keep coming back to. When the data say rank is excellent, traffic is excellent but sales are pathetic, usability (some part of it) is where you turn to next. Desirability, findability, credibility, persuasive architecture…these are the supportive pillars. Not meta tags. Not keyword domains.

How has Usability testing effected your SEO efforts? Are they in conflict or do they support each other well?

There’s never been a conflict. My SEO Partners, like SEOMoz or High Rankings, would never promote my efforts if they didn’t feel they were worth it.

Kim’s Usability Effect concentrates on the issues of making web sites user-centered.

Please make the case for usability online. With most big companies seemingly oblivious to the needs of the disabled, why should the average web site owner care?

Companies that think everybody can just hop into a car to go shop are missing out on billions in revenue. Real estate agents who understand that house hunting online saves gas and wear and tear on the staff are the smart ones. Accessibility isn’t just about being blind. It’s about people like me, who are seeing impaired and struggle with fonts, brightness and contrasts or someone with MS or Parkinson’s, who don’t have a steady hand to use a mouse. It’s for people like my husband, who hates reading books because of his dyslexia, but will download anything that’s been put to sound and listen to it in his car during his commute to work. It’s tradition for me to shop for holiday gifts online because I can’t stand shopping malls, traffic and crowds.

Usability isn’t just about design, by the way. It includes customer service gestures. For example, I sometimes buy from small "mom and pop" sites, even though they tend to be difficult to use for many reasons. However, many of them do the nicest things for their customers, such as toss in extra little gifts or write personal hand-written thank you notes. Usability is about the human to human side of the Internet and how we use it. People can be very persuasive. And, that’s a marketing gem.