Creative Commons

Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License

What is Findability?

Three Simple Goals

Help more people find your site

Help people find content within your site

Encourage return visits

Beyond SEO

INSIDE / OUTSIDERSS mod_rewrite

microformats

speed optimization

social networking

robots.txt

tell a friend

semantic markup

accessibility

mailing lists sitemap.xml web analytics

content

search utilities design

information architecture

copywriting

copywriting

progressive enhancement

SEO

ping services

open licensing: attribution

analog marketing

email marketing

register with search engines

contribute to a community

publish on other sites

link building

event sponsoring

search advertising

link directories

design competitions

the common thread

Findability is not ...

Findability is ...

web standards + great content =

findability bliss

The Standards Connection

Semantic Markup: machine readable

Accessibility: legible to search engines

Progressively Enhance: remove barriers

Microformats: re-discoverable

Semantic Message

<h1 id="logo" title=”description”> Site or Organization Name</h1>

/* css */#logo { text-indent: -9999px; background: url(image.gif); width: 200px; height: 25px;}

image replacement

mezzoblue.com/tests/revised-image-replacement/

Bad Karma?

apple.com - Leahy/Langridge Method

mezzoblue.com/archives/2008/05/05/image_replac/

“Aboutness”

Keyword Placement

<title>

<hn>

<strong> & <em>

link labels

alt & title attributes

Keyword Placement

Your URL

Style sheet file name

Logo file name

Naturally in your content (>= 7%)

Should I Research Keywords?

delicious.com

adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal

Accessible Message

<acronym title="Web Content Accessibility Guidelines"> WCAG</accronym> <abbr title="Louisiana">LA</abbr>

anticipate search behaviors

present the entire message

D Link

<img src="logos.gif" alt="Client logos" /> <a href="#footnote" title="Image description">D</a>

<div id="footnote"><h4>Our Clients Include … </h4><ul> <li> Yahoo! </li> <li> John Deere </li> <li> CNN </li> …</ul></div>

Progressively Enhance

make it work without JavaScript or Flash Support

Navigation can’t rely on JavaScript

http://www.udm4.com/

What About Ajax?

Ajax Pitfalls

Ajax Problems

No unique URL

JavaScript required to load

Not search engine friendly

Ajax Solutions

Don’t load mission critical content

Use the Hijax Approach

Portable Content is Re-discoverable

<div id="hcard-John-Stewart" class="vcard"> <span class="fn">John Stewart</span> <div class="org">The Daily Show</div> <div class="adr"> <div class="street-address">123 Some Street</div> <span class="locality">New York</span>, <span class="region">NY</span>, <span class="postal-code">12345</span> <span class="country-name">USA</span> </div></div>

hcard microformat

soupstudios.com/contact/

<div id="hcalendar-US-Election" class="vevent"><a href="http://sos.georgia.gov/elections/voting_information.htm" class="url"><abbr title="2008-11-04T07:00-05:0000" class="dtstart">November 4th 7am</abbr> : <abbr title="2008-11-24T20:00-05:00" class="dtend">24th 8pm, 2008</abbr> :

<span class="summary">US Election</span> at <span class="location">United States</span></a>

<div class="description">Don't forget to vote.</div>

hcalendar microformat

soupstudios.com/events/

microformats.org

Do search engines recognize microformats?

Will I get a ranking boost from validating?

findable websites aresuccessful websites

Let’s Talk

http://buildingfindablewebsites.com/checklist.pdf