Aarron Walter on Findability, SEO, and Web Standards
February 7, 2008Aarron Walter is the author of Building Findable Websites (New Riders, 2008) and one of twelve great speakers appearing at An Event Apart New Orleans on April 24–25. We asked Aarron to explain how proper use of web standards can lead to honest and effective search engine optimization (SEO).
Q. What is findability? How does it relate to SEO, and what is the web standards connection?
Findability is an under-appreciated sub-discipline of the web industry that attempts to make content more discoverable. Its primary goals are to help users:
- Find the websites they seek
- Find content within websites
- Rediscover the valuable content they’ve found
Although SEO (search engine optimization) occupies an important piece of findability’s domain, there’s more that can be done to make content findable. Search systems integrated into a site can help users discover the content they seek within your site, as can tag clouds and sitemap pages. Microformats, RSS feeds, and mailing lists make your content portable, so users can access it in the context that is most convenient for them. Content that is portable is easily rediscovered. Of course, content authoring by itself is critical to findability, as high quality content that serves the needs and desires of users can attract inbound links, and create ambient discussion that will generate traffic.
Web standards help foster findability by making content machine readable. Semantic markup communicates with search engines and migration agents—such as Technorati’s hCard converter—so they can discern your content’s information hierarchy, better identify what the content is about, and even automate tasks like migrating otherwise stationary information on a web page to your computer’s address book or your mobile device.
Web standards also help us prevent problems for search engines. By progressively enhancing interfaces with JavaScript or Flash and maintaining functionality when these technologies are unsupported we can ensure that search engines still have access to a website’s content. Progressive enhancement also helps make your content more accessible to disabled users and those on alternate devices so you can reach a broader audience.
Findability and web standards are symbiotically intertwined. I think the challenges to the adoption of web standards in the corporate world could largely be overcome by speaking to our clients about them in terms of findability. Clients often don’t get what web standards are or how they serve their business interests. They understand their customers and their business, and findability is all about connecting people with their target audience. It makes business sense, and it helps the web better serve our needs.
