Friday, June 6, 2003
Meanwhile on Google Answers
Meanwhile, on Google Answers...
Handwriting Analysis: “If a person wanted to fool a penmanship handwriting expert by changing his penmanship is it possible?”
Five Senses: “I want fact and fantasy, mythology and anecdote, and cross-cultural perceptions.”
Wedding and reception ideas: “I’m getting married in August.”
Internet (For $200)
Think EUO, Not SEO
It’s a bit of a misunderstanding of new webmasters that there is such a thing as Search Engine Optimization. SEO is a mere symptom of what one would better call EUO — End User Optimization. I wouldn’t know of a single thing to do purely to fare better with Google et al without actually serving your visitors better*:
Page titles — Clearly of great use to read while the page loads, to be bookmarked, and so on.
Use of HTML emphasis — Does <h1>, <h2>, <strong> and so on increase the weight given to a keyword? One should certainly think so. What’s more important, they are there for a use; to better structure a document for easy reading. Not of a bot, but humans.
Proper URLs — Again, the end user is looking at URLs. That actual web address, a navigation interface on its own. Carrying the keywords in the URL is of use for humans too.
Repeating keywords in the content — Of course, if you’re talking about something, you can’t avoid mentioning it repeatedly.
Not hiding text — And why would one ever want to do that solely for human visitors? Since it’s no use it’s better left out.
Alt-Text — Can be read while an image is loading, or in case images are turned off, or in case the browser doesn’t support images, or is Text-to-Speech based. No need to do this for SEs; do it for EUs.
Get links from outside — Yes, tell people about your site; put it in directories; spread word-of-mouth; make postings; email your friends or people of a similar field; in other words, do what you would do if there’d be no Google.
Keep content fresh — Because your visitors will notice and come back more often. Maybe some bots too, as side-effect.
Avoid duplicate content — Wouldn’t serve the end user. Why should a SE-bot like it, then?
Avoid link farming — Any use to the visitor? Link to what you think serves the reader in the context of the page. Don’t be paranoid about getting penalized for doing that.
Avoid frames — They are evil. From the human perspective as well. It’s about accessibility.
Avoid super-huge pages — Yes, Google has a limit of around 100K, after which it will not continue to index the rest of the page content. But it makes absolute sense to have rather small or medium sized pages. It just increases usability.
... and about 101 more tips & tricks.
*About the only thing that’s mostly SEO, and not EUO, are those meta-keywords and descriptions. And it turns out that’s the one thing pretty much ignored by most engines. Because it doesn’t really focus on the end-user. Which is what SEO should be all about.
So why not name this thing for what it is, to better avoid confusion? Because SEO somehow sounds more technical than “accessibility”? “To protect you against the big cold Google machine, you have to know every twist of their funny algorithm, and adapt your site accordingly”? No. And if anything is funny with Google at a certain moment in time, you better not rely on it to be in the future. Because for them to be successful means knowing what the user is looking for.
To those asking “Will this hurt my ranking? Should this boost my position?”, one should answer:
The user is not looking for Search Engine Optimized, but End User Optimized websites. And to be able to handle that task of EUOing a website, it’s enough to understand HTML, the language you attempt to communicate in, and the recipients, the actual people you are talking to. So ask questions about HTML, and ask questions that help you understand your readers... but when creating your next webpage, think of the mysterious Googlebot as a silent listener who’s lurking around the corner, making notes of what you’re telling someone else. Don’t make signs behind your back. Don’t turn around and talk to the brick wall. Your readers will appreciate it.
And the Webby Goes to Google
The 2003 Webby Award Winners are in:
Google News gets the Webby Award in category News, and is People’s Voice Winner for Technical Achievement for the second time in a row. They’ll be happy to put it in their Google Inc. awards attic after their five-words-limit acceptance speech: “We’ll meet again next year”.
Other ’Net Oscars (with their self-proclaimed mission to “honor excellence” since 1996) went to Alternet.org, TheOnion.com — People’s Voice winner for both humor and print + zines —, Wired.com, Movabletype.org, PayPal.com; and Amazon.com for Commerce.
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