BlogHer - Findability: Is your blog as findable as possible? - Comments

This is a great topic

Giyen — Sun, 26 Oct 2008 22:46:10 -0500

I have found that tagging has greatly increased my blog's findability. I am fascinated by google analytics reports and I have found that my blog has been increasingly "visable" to random queries based on the tags that I have put on each blog post. Perhaps these aren't the most engaged readers but I will take it!

(Okay, maybe I don't know exactly how tagging works but it does work by driving traffic to your blog that wouldn't ordinarily get there. :)

Thanks for the links of relevant blog posts.

Giyen

Bacon Is My Enemy

Search

Virginia DeBolt — Sun, 26 Oct 2008 20:15:32 -0500

Is there a box on your blog where readers can enter a word and click a button that says something like Search or Find? That's the search feature.

Most blogs have this automatically built in and ready to go, but it may need to be activated or selected as something you want to have show up. If it isn't activated now, look in the control panels for your blog and turn it on.

Virginia DeBolt
BlogHer Technology Contributing Editor
Web Teacher
First 50 Words

This article is extremely

clakel — Sun, 26 Oct 2008 18:22:21 -0500

This article is extremely helpful and overwhelming at the same time. How do you ensure your site has a search feature? I am using pblog, perhaps it is a very elementary program. Kindly advise. Thanks!

-C

Akel Ventures, an outsourcing sales solution for emerging consumer products companies. We invite you to visit our website at www.akelventures.com or contact us at info@akelventures.com

Or visit our blog

RapidWeaver

Virginia DeBolt — Sun, 26 Oct 2008 10:51:34 -0500

Assuming Bob is right about RapidWeaver (thanks, Bob) here's what you do. This is from page 42 of the Rapid Weaver user's manual (emphasis mine):

Permalinks
A Permalink is a permanent link to a specific blog entry so that visitors may return to it even if it has been archived and moved off the main Blog page. When enabled in the General tab of the Blog’s Setup area, RapidWeaver
will automatically create a Permalink for each blog entry. If you’d like to create a custom Permalink for a specific blog entry, click the ‘Custom Permalink’ checkbox and type in a unique word or phrase (e.g. ‘my_first_post’) into the Permalink field. When RapidWeaver publishes your blog page, it will create a Permalink based on the word or phrase you have entered.

Hope this helps.

Virginia DeBolt
BlogHer Technology Contributing Editor
Web Teacher
First 50 Words

Re: What blogging tool are you using?

bobafifi — Sun, 26 Oct 2008 10:02:14 -0500

Hi Virginia,

Rapid Weaver (http://www.realmacsoftware.com/rapidweaver/) is what they're using.

-Bob

What blogging tool are you using?

Virginia DeBolt — Sun, 26 Oct 2008 09:38:46 -0500

I looked at your blog. For starters, you could try to implement Aarron's first suggestion -- to make your URLs contain keywords from the blog post title. I intended to tell you some steps to do that, but I couldn't figure out which blog platform you are using. Let me know.

Virginia DeBolt
BlogHer Technology Contributing Editor
Web Teacher
First 50 Words

Thank you

KLinnea — Sun, 26 Oct 2008 07:27:04 -0500

Thank you for a very informative article. Somehow when blogging you (secretly) hope to be read, even if it feels like you're writing utter nonsense.

K:-))

A newbie - this is all goobledey gook to me

palomablanca — Sun, 26 Oct 2008 06:59:54 -0500

hello there, I have just started a blog on my website www.kidsinmadrid.com

I am hoping it will be useful to families looking for fun activities to participate in. What I am totally in the dark about is how to optimise your blog. I am such a newbie it's all goobledey gook to me! Any simple (very simple) advice to give?

Start with the top priorities

Virginia DeBolt — Sat, 25 Oct 2008 17:54:18 -0500

and slowly work at it. You'll learn faster than you think.

Virginia DeBolt
BlogHer Technology Contributing Editor
Web Teacher
First 50 Words

Thank You

spitzberri — Sat, 25 Oct 2008 16:48:30 -0500

There are always Newbies like me out there who can use information like this because I even wouldn't have known what to look for. So, thanks for making me aware of things - now I have to go study the darn thing because it's even a different language than I speak :-)

Thanks for the link, Elise

Virginia DeBolt — Sat, 25 Oct 2008 12:32:52 -0500

Sorry I didn't find this article when I was looking for links to share about this.

Virginia DeBolt
BlogHer Technology Contributing Editor
Web Teacher
First 50 Words

you have to know which ones you can fix

Virginia DeBolt — Sat, 25 Oct 2008 12:31:22 -0500

The validator reports everything. Some of it isn't under your control. For example Google maps or Amazon affiliate links create validation errors. If errors are caused by the parts of the blog under your control, you can do your best to eliminate them.

Most blogging tools are pretty good about writing valid code. Regular web sites made with tools like Dreamweaver may not do so well unless used by a pro.

So maybe it isn't as bad as you think. The parts that are generated by your blogging tool may be pretty good.

Virginia DeBolt
BlogHer Technology Contributing Editor
Web Teacher
First 50 Words

Fortunately, most blog

Elise Bauer — Sat, 25 Oct 2008 11:08:31 -0500

Fortunately, most blog platforms are well optimized for findability. It's the corporate display sites that most miss the point of findability. Putting everything in flash, requiring registration just to see the content, not letting users use the back arrow on their browser, not putting in redirects when you change the URL structure. These are some of the common practices that get in the way of findability.

Interesting that this is still a topic of note today. I wrote about Findability in 2005 as a plea to clients to rethink their web strategy: Location, location, location - Findability on the Web.

Elise BauerSimply Recipes

Yikes, I am freaked out now

Kalyn Denny — Sat, 25 Oct 2008 09:13:20 -0500

I entered my blog url into the validator tool you provided and found that there are LOTS of errors! Thanks for this good information. Even though most of it is definitely above my level of geeky knowledge, I'm always trying to learn more. And looks like I might want to invest in hiring someone to clean up my blog template.

Kalyn Denny
Kalyn's Kitchen

Findability: Is your blog as findable as possible?

Virginia DeBolt — Sat, 25 Oct 2008 07:58:04 -0500

Everyone has heard of search engine optimization, right? But have you heard of findability? I hadn't, until recently.

The term "findability" seems to originate with Peter Morville, who published a book called Ambient Findability in 2002. Blogger DonnaM wrote about it in 2004 in Usability testing for findability. Jakob Neilsen wrote about it in 2006 in Use Old Words When Writing for Findability. In 2008, I happened to read Building Findable Websites: Web Standards, SEO, and Beyond by Aarron Walter and I got very excited about how simple changes to my blog might make it more successful.

In fact, when I wrote Review: Building Findable Websites on my blog, I said,

Building Findable Websites: Web Standards, SEO, and Beyond by Aarron Walter (New Riders, 2008) is one of those rare books that is so full of good ideas, it makes me enthusiastic about what I can do when I put the book down and go work on my blog or website.

As Walter defines it, findability includes accessibility, usability, information architecture, development, marketing, copywriting, design, and, oh yeah, search engine optimization. Walter continues to try to popularize the concepts, and recently published Findability, Orphan of the Web Design Industry at A List Apart. He starts right off with the orphan metaphor and works it all the way through:

Once upon a time in a web design agency, there lived a sad little boy named Findability. He was a very good boy with a big heart for helping people…

* find the websites they seek,
* find content within websites, and
* rediscover valuable content they’d found.

He used his arsenal of talent for planning, writing, coding, and analysis to create websites that could connect with a target audience.

A bit later in the article he sums up findability as,

The fundamental goal of findability is to persistently connect your audience with the stuff you write, design, and build. When you create relevant and valuable content, present it in a machine readable format, and provide tools that facilitate content exchange and portability, you’ll help ensure that the folks you’re trying to reach get your message.

What are some of specific techniques for findability discussed in the book? The book talks about markup strategies, which include web standards, accessbility, and microformats.

In terms of web standards, that means to separate stucture (the (X)HTML) from presentation (the CSS) from behavior (the JavaScript) to create sites that are accessible both humans and machines. Use modern code that follows the rules and check how you're doing with a validator. Use alt attributes with images, encode characters, use tags that communicate semantically by making page hierarchy clear. There are a number of other markup tips such as which tags are essential and whether or not to use meta tags. Regarding images, get rid of image maps, and if you replace headings with snappy looking images make sure you do it accessibly. Microformats include hCalendar, hCard, hReview, hResume and others. These are nothing more than standardized ways to present certain information with HTML and CSS that the search engines (and a lot of other apps) recognize. I've been using hReview on Web Teacher for some time now. I can verify that reviews I write this way make the search engines very happy.

In terms of server-side strategies, the book talks about building file structure, 404 pages, URLS, and server optimization for speed. It discusses naming everything from the domain name to files, folders, and URLs. There's advice for moving pages or whole domains and how to use redirects and custom file-not-found pages to keep them findable in the new location.

Creating content that drives traffic is another important aspect of findability. Walter says quality content is on topic, fills a niche, conveys passionate interest, is trustworthy, appealing, original and appropriate. There are also many types of content beyond the blog post. You could consider other types of publications such as white papers or articles, links, reviews, recommendations, syndication, and user generated content in comments and forums as part of your content. You can also add RSS feeds from other sources such as Last.fm, Flickr, job sites, events and other worthy feeds to your content.

Of course, most of us here are concerned with blog findability. The strategies include regular posting, linking and trackbacks, original templates, post titles, archives, topics, and special sections on the blog for things like popular posts and recent posts.

Be sure your site has a search feature. If you use Ajax, Flash, audio and video be sure you are not locking out some of your potential readers. If you have a normal web site and not a blog, try to build a mailing list so that you can contact readers and lure them back to the site regularly.

Merely summarizing the high points here created quite an imposing list of things to do. Fortunately, Walter thought through which actions are the most important and beneficial for you. The final chapter in the book tells you how to prioritize the changes you may need to make and helps you tackle them starting with the most useful first.

I happen to know Aarron Walter. We work together on a curriculum project for the Web Standards Project. I contacted him about this article and asked him to identify the two most important things a blogger could do to improve findability. Here's his response:

1. Customize your permalink structure to include keywords in your URLs. Many blog platforms make it easy to define the structure of each blog post URL. Ideally you want each URL to contain the same keywords as those in your post title.

2. Define your update services. When you publish on your blog, it automatically notifies (called a ping) many tracking services instantly so your content gets indexed by search engines and various other services. Be sure to define which update services your blog should notify. WordPress keeps a comprehensive list of the top updates services at http://codex.wordpress.org/Update_Services.

Helpful resources for making your blog more findable:
- Aarron Walter's site: free download of Findability Strategy Checklist
- Findability Checklist
- A Blog Not Limited: Getting Semantic With Microformats, Part 1 the first of a series on microformats by Emily Lewis
- SEO Blog: 10 Coding Guidelines for Perfect Findability and Web Standards
- SEO Blog: The 10 Worst Findability Crimes Committed by Web Designers & Developers
- BlogHer: Melanie Nelson's Basic Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Tactics

--
Virginia DeBolt
BlogHer Technology Contributing Editor
Web Teacher
First 50 Words