I have to weigh in as a usability specialist who is sympathetic towards SEO (white-hat, at least). I've been digging deep in to the SEO world over the past year and have begun to see more and more convergence with usability as search spiders become more sophisticated.
While I agree that building solely for SEO can compromise usability, that's true of any narrow-minded focus. Building solely for cutting-edge design or your marketing department also frequently compromises usability. On the other hand, thoughtful SEO, and the architecture it requires, can often be good for human users as well. In addition, I think it's very important to usability that we start to consider the entire life-cycle of the consumer, from the moment they sit down at the computer. If a person types a query into Google and gets a link that represents my site badly and then takes them to a completely disconnected page, I've done a bad job of creating a user experience. Understanding SEO is an important part of that pre-site user experience. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Posted from the new ixda.org http://www.ixda.org/discuss?post=24134 ________________________________________________________________ *Come to IxDA Interaction08 | Savannah* February 8-10, 2008 in Savannah, GA, USA Register today: http://interaction08.ixda.org/ ________________________________________________________________ Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ....... [EMAIL PROTECTED] Unsubscribe ................ http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines ............ http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .................. http://www.ixda.org/help
