If technology doesn't work for people...it doesn't work!®
Pitfalls of Designing for Usability and SEO
10 Things to Watch Out for When Designing for Usability and SEO
by Randy Pickard, Vice President, Product Innovation, User Centric
Usability problems can arise when a site is over designed to rank highly on the crawler-based search engines. The traffic generated from SEO is wasted if visitors abandon the site because they don't find it useful or don't like it.
User Centric, Inc. has developed a list of 10 areas of direct conflict that can be challenging to resolve:
- Keyword Stuffing in Headlines - It is important for SEO to insert keywords in headlines, title tag, and opening paragraph, but it often detracts from the readability of a web page. The terms that people use to search for something are not always the best terms to use when writing about it.
- Repetition of Terms in Body Text - Keyword density is critical for SEO, but it is problematic for usability to add extra words repeated multiple times.
- Home Page - For best SEO results, prominent hyperlinks should lead to pages with selected keywords as the primary subject of the page. Limiting the number of links may pass along greater link juice to the pages receiving the links. Anchor text should include key words. A flat directory structure is optimum, with three directory levels maximum...
Usability Tip
by Randy Pickard
Ensure that your site is accessible to both humans and search engine bots.
An easy way to test for accessibility is to turn off image, picture, and animation loading via the advanced tools controls of your web browser. This will limit the display to only include readable text and links that are easily accessed by search engine bots. While search engines have improved their capabilities to capture information from graphical and animated formats such as Flash, it can still be hit or miss, and this technique is useful for ensuring that your content is accessible.
Traveling with AA's New Mobile Boarding Pass
by Gavin Lew, Managing Director, User Centric
On November 13, 2008, American Airlines started offering mobile boarding passes for select flights departing from Chicago's O'Hare International Airport. These mobile passes are equivalent to the paper boarding passes you can generate at check-in kiosks or on your home printer but are displayed on the screen on your mobile device or PDA. Instead of handing your paper pass to TSA guards at airport security and then to the gate agent, you show them the barcode on your device's screen.
As a heavy mobile user and frequent traveler, this option initially sounded like it would be ideal for me so I tried the mobile boarding pass within days of its initial launch. This article documents my experience. Overall, the process had its ups and downs. Notably, I needed to use more mobile features than I expected and I suspect technical improvements are probably needed to ensure that mobile passes consistently work with all scanners.
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Something to Wine About
by Bob Schumacher, Managing Director, User Centric
Benzinger Reserve Red 2005
Back in October I got to spend a beautiful weekend in Sonoma. I'd never been there before and was anxiously awaiting for this time to sample the local goods. They did not disappoint. We visited a half-dozen wineries. One that really impressed me was the Benzinger family estate near Glen Ellen, CA. This estate has its own microclimate that allows for biodynamic farming. Nothing seemed rushed or cheap. They took huge pride in their craft and their method of viticulture. It was very impressive. All the wines are organic and very well put together.
One wine we sampled was their 2005 Reserve Red that is a 55% Cab/45% Merlot blend. As they write about it: "Elegant, yet full-bodied...The aromas are reminiscent of violet, chocolate, leather and tobacco. In the mouth there are layered flavors of dark berry, tart cherry and a slight earthiness. This wine has a sweet, soft entry; solid mid palate and lengthy finish." I would agree! Enjoy for less than $20/bottle.
