Is Your Key Content Drowning in News?

Many web editors spend a lot of their time writing news stories for the company web site. However, traffic analysis frequently reveals that this content is not very popular - and that users may in fact miss the key content they come to find (product data, addresses etc.) because it's practically drowning in news stories.

Furu, Nina. Content Strategy (2005). Articles>Web Design>Information Design>Search Engine Optimization

How To Get Better Search Engine Rankings

If your company web site is currently not ranking well at search engines, you are missing out on a vital source of web traffic. Here are some tips for improving your search engine rankings yourself (without hiring a search engine optimization company).

Content Strategy (2007). Articles>Web Design>Search Engine Optimization

The Web Developer's SEO Cheat Sheet

The ten essential categories for good optimization are: important HTML tags, search engine indexing limits, title tag syntax, common canonical issues, 301 redirects on Apache, search engine robot user agents, common robot traps to avoid, robot meta tags syntax, robots.txt syntax and site map syntax.

Dover, Danny. SEOmoz (2008). Articles>Web Design>Search Engine Optimization

Using the Repertory Grid and Laddering Technique to Determine the User's Evaluative Model of Search Engines    

The purpose of this research is to explore a method for the determination of users' representations of search engines, formed during their interaction with these systems. Determines the extent to which these elicited "mental models" indicate the system aspects of importance to the user and from this their evaluative view of these tools.

Johnson, Frances C. and Sarah E. Crudge. Journal of Documentation (2007). Articles>Web Design>Search>User Centered Design

Search Goal Redefinition Through User-System Interaction    

The purpose of this research is to examine search goal redefinition during users' interaction with information retrieval systems.

Hider, Philip M. Journal of Documentation (2007). Articles>Web Design>Search>User Interface

Best Practices for Designing Faceted Search Filtersn

Recently, Office Depot redesigned their search user interface, adding attribute-based filtering and creating a more dynamic, interactive user experience. Unfortunately, Office Depot’s interaction design misses some key points, making their new search user interface less usable and, therefore, less effective. That’s the bad news. The good news is that the Office Depot site presents us with an excellent case study for demonstrating some of the important best practices for designing filters for faceted search results.

Nudelman, Greg. UXmatters (2009). Articles>Web Design>Search>Usability

Testing Search for Relevancy and Precision

Despite the fact that site search often receives the most traffic, it’s also the place where the user experience designer bears the least influence. Few tools exist to appraise the quality of the search experience, much less strategize ways to improve it. When it comes to site search, user experience designers are often sidelined like the single person at an old flame’s wedding: Everything seems to be moving along without you, and if you slipped out halfway through, chances are no one would notice. But relevancy testing and precision testing offer hope. These are two tools you can use to analyze and improve the search user experience.

Ferrara, John. List Apart, A (2009). Articles>Web Design>Search>Assessment

Internal Site Search Analysis: Simple, Effective, Life Altering!

Now when people show up at a website, many of them ignore our lovingly crafted navigational elements and jump to the site search box. The increased use of site search as a core navigation method makes it very important to understand the data that site search generates.

Kaushik, Avinash. List Apart, A (2009). Articles>Web Design>Search>Usability

Beyond Goals: Site Search Analytics from the Bottom Up

While goal-driven analysis is wonderfully useful, we’ll explore a different, “bottom-up” approach that relies on pattern analysis and failure analysis to help you understand your users’ intent in qualitative ways that complement the top-down approach.

Rosenfeld, Louis. List Apart, A (2009). Articles>Web Design>Search>Assessment

The Seven Sins of Blogging, Sin #6, Being Unfindable

How can you enable readers to naturally find the content in your archives? How can you make the hundreds of posts you write more visible and prominent, especially if readers are looking for it? This is partly what the field of findability is all about. You can implement several easy aggregation techniques to increase the findability of your content. You can add tags and categories to your posts, and readers can navigate your content this way.

Johnson, Tom H. I'd Rather Be Writing (2009). Articles>Web Design>Blogging>Search Engine Optimization

Social Media Accounts for 18% of Information Search Market

Google is no longer the only hub for content discovery. The statusphere is introducing new channels that now serve as our attention dashboards and it's the collection of streams of consciousness from those we choose to follow. Collecta, Twitter Search, Facebook News Feeds, FriendFeed, etc., serve as the gateways to insight and enlightenment.

Solis, Brian. Social Media Today (2009). Articles>Web Design>Search>Social Networking

Calculating The True SEO Costs Of Major Site Changes

Over the past year we have worked with a number of organizations that have chosen to relocate their sites from an existing domain to a new domain. One of the questions that always comes up early in the process is “how much traffic are we going to lose?” It is an excellent question and not an easy one to answer, but in today’s column I am going to explore that exact question.

Enge, Eric. Search Engine Land (2009). Articles>Web Design>Redesign>Search Engine Optimization

Make More Money: Best Practices for Ads in Search Results: Part 2 

In this installment of Search Matters, we’ll continue our discussion of ads in search results. Understand what makes a good ad. Limit cannibalization. Provide ads for internal merchandise instead of third-party advertising. Pay special attention to ads on pages that appear if there are no search results.

Nudelman, Greg and Frank Guo. UXmatters (2009). Articles>Web Design>Search Engine Optimization>E Commerce

Make More Money: Best Practices for Ads in Search Results: Part 1 

Conflicting demands make many UX professionals think of ads as a necessary evil. Customers frequently go out of their way to say they hate ads, while marketers always seem to try their hardest to stuff as many of them as they can on each search results page on your site. This leaves many UX design professionals caught in the middle, trying to balance the ad equation—and frequently failing to fully satisfy either customers or marketers. For this 2-part column, I’ve teamed up with advertisement and eyetracking research guru Frank Guo to present real-world strategies for successfully integrating ads into your search results. The goal is making money without unduly turning off your customers.

Nudelman, Greg and Frank Guo. UXmatters (2009). Articles>Web Design>Search Engine Optimization>E Commerce