subject: How Website Developers, And You, Can Contribute To Findability? [print this page] Findability is the broader discipline that unites all strategies to help your audience find what they seek.
In his book Ambient Findability: What We Find Changes Who We Become, Peter Morville popularized the term findability, defining it as: The quality of being located or navigated, the degree to which an object of piece of data can be located, and the degree to which a system supports navigation and retrieval.
Morville's definition may spark associations with information architecture, usability, and search engine optimization. Although all of these disciplines play important roles, findability can actually be found throughout the Web project lifecycle, creating a common thread that can unite every facet of the Web planning, design, and development process and all team members involved.
Findability is present in information architecture, development, marketing, copywriting, design, SEO, accessibility & usability. We discover findability in all of the major disciplines that make up the Web. So often freelancers and members of smaller Web teams end up wearing a number of different hats - doing the work of an information architect, designer, developer, and more. Whether you find yourself handling strictly Web development or being jack-of-all-trades on projects, it's important to think about findability at every step of the way so you can ensure the success of your site for both users and the client.
Developers have three primary goals in making websites findable - help people find your website, help people find what they are looking for once they arrive at your site and bring your audience back to your website. Web developers can contribute significantly by addressing these major desires of search engines by incorporating them into their development process:
The content should be naturally keyword rich (not stuffed) and valuable to readers.
Content should be visible to search engine spiders with no barriers which may prevent a full indexing of the page.
Content that communicates a clear information hierarchy so spiders can understand what the page is about.
Content that loads quickly so spiders can index it efficiently.
Links to your site from reputable sources so they can determine the reputation of your site.
Honest content that isn't trying to trick the search engine.
More content than code to mark up the page.
Clean, meaningful URLs with keywords in them if possible.
Domains that have been around for a while.
People and search engines both appreciate great content. When people find useful content on a website, they tend to evangelize - creating links on their blog, links on user-generated news sites, and even discussing your content on discussion boards. Those inbound links to your site not only bring other people to your site, they boost your reputation with search engines. Search Engines evaluate the reputation of a site based upon how many other reputable sites link to it. This means that when you provide your users with good content, you are also improving the findability of your site.
