Jeff Woelker : Chicago SEO, SEM, and Social Media Consultant

What makes a website inherently “findable” these days? Is it information architecture, web design principles, an understanding of search engines, usable interfaces, or a combination of all of these?

It’s a combination. Findability requires a holistic perspective that balances engineering, marketing, and design. I often invite web managers to ask the following three questions. Can people find your site? Can people find their way around your site? And, can people find your content and services despite your site? Success in all three areas is important and can’t be achieved without paying attention to the ways that code, content and structure work together to influence usability and findability.

Either using the items listed above, or adding your own, what is the most important aspect to think of when designing a website to ensure it is easy to use and understand?

Empathy for the user is the key to good design. Only by understanding user behavior and psychology within a particular context of use can we create products, services, and experiences that help users achieve goals, complete tasks, and find what they need. That’s why user research methods such as design ethnography and usability testing are so important. Of course, we must also know enough about the technology to see what’s possible. Often, it’s not enough to optimize for ease and efficiency. We must also strive for desirability and aim for innovation.

Do you feel like Flash, AJAX, and other highly visual, but non-text based interfaces, are making the web more or less usable or findable?

It depends. Great teams employ visual interfaces and rich interaction to create engaging user experiences without sacrificing usability and findability. Unfortunately, most teams aren’t great and quickly get in over their heads.

Are there any companies who you think really exemplify “findability” in the way they create online or offline experiences?

Other than Google, which is too obvious to mention, there’s no single company that comes to mind. What’s exciting right now is the proliferation of ideas and inventions across platforms and media. On the iPhone, for instance, there are some great niche applications like SitOrSquat (for finding public toilets when you’ve gotta go) and Nearest Tube (for finding the London Underground when you’re aboveground). Location-based services and augmented reality are particularly intriguing at the moment.

Where do you see search engines and other meta data engines in the next five years?

A key point we make in our new book, Search Patterns (available from O’Reilly Media in January 2010), is the need to think outside the box. We must continue to make incremental improvements (e.g., better interfaces and algorithms) while simultaneously pursuing radical innovation. This requires thinking more expansively about goals and strategy. Twitter and the Wikipedia were not conceived as search solutions, but as knowledge management innovations they have both transformed the search landscape. Often, the biggest changes emerge not from the center but from outside the category entirely. We all need to work on our peripheral vision.

If there’s one thing you hope people walk away with after listening to your keynote address at SES Chicago, what do you hope it will be?

I hope folks leave with a sense of urgency and enthusiasm. My goal is to inspire people to make search better.

Disclosure: I have not been financially compensated for this post, although I have received a free press pass to cover SES Chicago.

I’m not even going to try to describe this. Just watch the video. Beautiful interactions and interface. The possibilities for something like in terms of user interfaces, data manipulation, gaming, advertising, design, etc. are endless:

This is a really interesting video from Peter Linsley, a Product Manager at Google Image Search. He explains some of the fundamental differences between regular Google searchers and Google Image searchers:

Google Image searchers look all over the page and are not necessarily looking for the #1 result. If they find an image in the lower right or left corner that interests them, they will click through. They also go very deep into the result set, looking for images.

He also goes into some detail as to how Google Image search actually works, in defining images as line art or photography, their sizes, and even eliminating duplicates. He finishes on some image search best practices:

• Focus on the user – provide context to your images with on-page text
• High quality images with EXIF data

Enjoy!

So while the majority of the nation was watching the Inauguration today, the White House web team quietly transitioned over the old WhiteHouse.gov to a new, slick content management based website. It’s got the same look and feel as many of the websites created during (now) President Obama’s run for the presidency.

One of the many cool features, besides being mostly CSS based, having a modern web aesthetic, and looking much more SEO friendly (title tags, page titles, CSS menus, using H2 and H4 tags, alt tags for images, very little flash, etc.) – it’s also got an email subscription feature right at the top and several blog feeds. Here are all the links to the blogs currently on the site:

• White House.gov Main Blog Feed
• White House.gov Agenda Articles Feed
• White House.gov Press Office Feed
• White House.gov OMB News Article Feed
• White House.gov Photo Gallery Feed
• White House.gov Video Feed

Just a heads up, the only link with any content is the “Main Blog Feed”, but the others will hopefully be populated soon after all the content generated today. Looking forward to seeing how often content is pushed out of here. Truly a historic day for our country, both online and off.

UPDATE: The White House is also on Twitter: @whitehouse_gov

So I was watching this video today about Google’s new search feature SearchWiki, which they launched yesterday, and had some thoughts. If you haven’t seen the video, it’s posted below:

I’ve watched the video a few times, and here are my initial thoughts.
[full disclosure: I do search engine marketing, among other things, for a living.]

Pros:

• It’s nice that you can modify search results to your own liking. I often see results, which I know are wrong or not applicable to me which I’d like to remove. Now I can do that.
• I like the annotation feature to provide the user a place to markup their results. It allows me to add metadata to the results I like or don’t like.
• I like the Digg-like comment function whereby users can vote comments up or down. (see image below).

Cons:

• The remove results feature. I understand why Google provided this feature, but there are two things inherently flawed with this:
  • It’s Google’s job to filter out non-applicable results, not the users.
  • What happens when that site adds new content? Will the user be notified about this? Isn’t the nature of the web inherently fluid?
• Google is supposed to have a minimalistic interface. By allowing users to annotate, modify, and remove listings within the interface, isn’t Google allowing users to destroy an otherwise minimalistic and functional interface, even if it is by their own doing and to Google’s detriment?
• Before you rearrange results or add notes, you see this message:
  “Please remember that your SearchWiki notes will be visible to other users, identified with your Google Account nickname.” Why does Google have to share personally identifiable information? If this is personal search, shouldn’t it be personal (i.e. for my eyes only)?

Judging by the “trackback” links on the Google blog, it sounds like a mix of both positive and negative reviews so far. I’ll give it to you, my readers, what do you think? Are you all warm and fuzzy about personalized search or is it just another feature Google offers which you may or may not try out?

This isn’t the first time I’ve seen spatial interfaces in place, but it’s definitely one of the coolest. See the video below from the folks at Oblong (originally from MIT):

g-speak overview 1828121108 from john underkoffler on Vimeo.

Here’s some Movie References that show similar interfaces:

And of course there’s the scene in Minority Report where Tom Cruise’s character actually uses one of these interfaces. Well…

Some of the SOE’s core ideas are already familiar from the film Minority Report, whose characters performed forensic analysis using massive, gesturally driven displays. The similarity is no coincidence: one of Oblong’s founders served as science advisor to Minority Report and based the design of those scenes directly on his earlier work at MIT.

So what industry is most likely to use this kind of technology first. Probably the one that is always the most technological adept and first to market. Oh come on, you know. It’s THAT one.

Within the last week, I’ve been lucky enough to secure a ticket for Search Engine Strategies Chicago on December 8-11th. One of the panelists, Randy Pickard of UserCentric (based here in Chicago) is presenting something very near and dear to me: Usability & SEO: Two Wins for the Price of One. I was fortunate enough to interview Randy and hear what he has to say about usability, search engines, flash, and how much longer we have to deal with “www”.

1. Being both a search engine marketer and usability professional can often be a challenge. On the usability side, you want to provide the best user experience possible by only providing the absolute most pertinent information in the simplest form possible. On the search engine marketer side, you have to provide enough information for search engines to associate your website with the right keywords, often making website copy redundant or cumbersome. How do you balance those two worlds?

Making your site usable always comes first. There is little point in driving traffic via SEO to a site if visitors do not like the site and exit immediately. Usable sites generate multiple page views, repeat visits, and transactions. Stating the obvious, it is best to optimize for both usability and search. Effective SEO says “Look – we have what you want!”. When those people arrive at the site, good usability says “Look – here it is!”. If you can design the user interface to say “Look – we have what you want, and here it is!”, it is a win-win. However, if you attend the Search Engine Stategies – Chicago session on “Usability & SEO: Two Wins for the Price of One” on December 9, I am on the panel and will outline nine areas of conflict that can be challenging to resolve. Redundant copy is just one of the nine areas of conflict that will be discussed.

Conflicts between usability and SEO should be resolved in large part based on how visitors are finding the website. If visitors are arriving based on: 1) searching for the name of the website; 2) inputting the site’s URL directly into the address bar , or 3) coming to the site via direct links from other sites or paid search, most usability versus SEO conflicts should be resolved in favor of usability. However, if the majority of a site’s traffic is the result of algorithmic search engine referrals resulting from keyword term searches, it may be to appropriate to consider resolving some conflicts with a bias favoring SEO considerations.

The best way to avoid usability and SEO conflicts is to address both at the beginning of the website development process. Usability and SEO should both be considered during the information architecture stage.

2. Flash. That one word phrase is enough to make both an SEO and usability expert cringe. There have been a number of strides made in terms of helping Flash become indexed by search engines as well as making it more usable, however, there is still lots to be done. Can you think of one major obstacle still to be overcome by Flash that could help both SEO and usability?

The use of Flash should be dependent on the mission of the site and the target users. For academic, professional, and informational sites it is an abomination based on usability, SEO considerations, and accessibly to build a website entirely with Flash. Most people still have a much better device for displaying animation sitting in their living room, their TV. However, in many cases, trying to talk a client out of using Flash is a no win proposition. Many clients will not be satisfied with a site that appears to be static, regardless of how much effort you expend on explaining the drawbacks of Flash and other animation tools.

There are numerous tutorials on the Web on creating alternate html content for a Flash site and on how to embed Flash within an html site. The two biggest obstacle to overcome are: 1) the time consuming aspects of creating and updating a site with alternative content in both Flash and html, and 2) the fact that too many web designers’ primary interest seems to be the depth of their portfolio, which leads to overlooking either embedding Flash within a solid base of html or creating alternative content in html. Thus, a tool that allowed for simultaneous creation of both Flash and spider accessible html content would be a boon to Flash developers.

3. Microformats can provide so much additional semantic information for websites benefiting both usability and search engine optimization efforts, yet they are not very widely adopted. Why do you think this is?

My perception is that adoption of microformats will be a very slow process. Critical mass may not be obtained until at least one major organization makes promoting microformats a priority mission. Three of the factors holding back the adoption of the semantic web are: 1) lack of standards; 2) xml is already widely accepted for commercial applications, thus the .com universe probably does not perceive the “hassle” factor to be a worthwhile trade-off for the benefits; and 3) viewers are seemingly satisfied with the gradually improving quality of search engine results, thus there is no hue and cry for the development of semantic markup.

I think that among a sizable swath of designers and developers, there IS a movement toward semantic markup, at least in spirit, if not always in practice. Here are some reasons designers and developers may not be jumping on the microformat bandwagon.

1. Visibility: From the point of view of a production person, microformats are somewhat invisible when used, except to users of the sites that harvest them. This makes them one of the easiest things to cut when time is running low and you’re under pressure, because “nobody will notice” in a big way if you omit them for a web site’s launch. Unfortunately, “for launch” has a tendency to become “for good” when other projects arise.

2. Chicken-and-egg: Until microformats are widely adopted by the publishers of raw content, sites that harvest microformat info will have a small pool of info to draw on, and their success may be limited by this. On the other hand, until these imaginative sites become successful, it may be hard for content publishers to justify spending extra time on microformats that have limited immediate benefit.

3. Confusing: Microformats are also a bit hard to grasp, even when you know where to look. They are highly distributed, cooperative, and “mashed-up” in nature. From the content publisher’s point of view, it takes some research and tinkering to understand their potential benefits. From the content harvester / masher-up’s point of view, it takes imagination to create useful and successful applications for microformats.

4. Reservation about mashups? Perhaps some people have reservations about “setting their content free” in this way – making it so openly available for inclusion in other sites that they don’t know where it will show up and how it will be used there.

4. There is a growing movement to remove “www” from the url structure of many websites. Do you think this is just a rogue movement and that “www” is part of every users web behavior or do you think “www” is no longer needed when referring to websites?

My teenage son is already dismissive of my typing “www” into the address bar of a browser when inputting a URL. Given that he is a pretty good source for discerning up and coming trends, I judge it to be inevitable that “www’ will disappear, just as “http” is no longer in standard usage. However, “www” is such a accepted part of the lexicon, that URL’s both with and without “www” will be likely be common for at least a couple more years.

5. Of the major search engines: Google, Yahoo, MSN, Ask.com, and AOL. Which do you think has the most usable interface for discovering information? Why?

I use multiple search engines. If I am single mindedly focused on search, I use Google or Ask. However, if I also want to glance at how the financial markets are performing, I use Yahoo, and if I want to check out the headlines I utilize MSN. The search box is front and center and prominently displayed on all the major engines, and download time is not an issue on broadband connections, so my personal answer to this question is “it depends”.

This last weekend, I had the pleasure of volunteering with Chicago Cares for an adult computer education class at Ella Flagg Young School on Chicago’s west side. Several of us showed up to help teach basic computer skills, internet browsing, and Excel to some more advanced users. I ended up tutoring two women who couldn’t have been nicer if they had tried. I haven’t seen anyone that excited about Excel in such a long time. It definitely made me laugh and smile. Working in online marketing, it’s easy to become cynical and think “Oh, everyone knows about LinkedIn” or Twitter or Digg or etc. etc.

Well let me tell you, there are people – LOTS of really great people who are out there that know very little about things you and I take for granted everyday – Google, email, Microsoft Office, paying your bills online, and so much more. But there is hope. You can help them. Chicago Cares, Chicago Volunteer, and even Craigslist have lots of opportunities for you to spread the wealth of knowledge you carry with you each day.

I’ve volunteered at the Recording for the Blind and Dyslexic before and, although worthwhile, it was nothing compared to the excitement these folks showed at, what I consider, some of the most common tasks. I’m headed back on November 8th and you’re more than welcome to join me. I think the class next time will be much larger and we’ll need more help. Email me or leave a comment for more info.

So I saw this video this morning from TechCrunch and it shows a new search interface that Google is testing out more widely. I remember hearing about this last year and thought, I’d rather not. Seeing it again still kind of leaves me with that opinion. Here are my hesitations:

1. User Interface – Please don’t do this to the current interface. It’s kind of ugly. The reason I go to Digg is because I expect this kind of nuttiness. I go to Google because I want information, not a bunch of buttons to push.
2. Politics – There is a lot of competition out there for top search results. I’m assuming that if this is fully rolled out that voting up and down will only be a marginal part of the search ranking, or if you vote up or down or add/remove results, that it will only effect your ranking views when you are logged into Google.

My gut tells me that this is just another product team project that won’t make it all the way to the homepage. Only time will tell though.

Update: I received an email from Dan Lewis, an employee of Wikia Search, and he said that Wikia Search has been doing a lot of this stuff for a while now. Check them out when you have a second.

So I was doing some research today for a client project and I found this link below listed in Yahoo’s search index.

Any idea why they would continue to publish this result, even after identifying “Dangerous downloads”? I mean, don’t you want to provide the best customer experience possible to your users?

Does anyone have any insight into why they are doing this?