SEO is dead. Long live ‘findability’.

A List Apart publish a great article from web designer Aarron Walter — author of Building Findable Websites: Web Standards, SEO, and Beyond (New Riders, 2008) — addressing the issue of, what he terms, ‘findability’ and it’s importance in the web design and development project cycle. Walter rightly asserts that, as web professionals, connecting with our audience is the most important aspect of our work. He believes ‘findability’ is an integral part of making that connection but thinks most of us come at ‘findability’ from the wrong angle — seeing it simply as what he calls “search engine duping” SEO. I like his take on this and feel that if we start calling it ‘findability’, not SEO, we might just take it more seriously for ALL projects.

For my part, my team and I have mostly been doing ‘findability’ but calling it SEO - cue Monday morning memo title ‘SEO is now being called findability upon pain of death!’