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.
Although Findability had a closely knit family, he felt like an orphan, because his siblings always seemed to get the lion’s share of time and attention from the folks in the web design agency. Everyone fawned over the curly-haired, rosy-cheeked twins Information Architecture and Usability who put everything in its place with a label that all would understand. Project Management garnered everyone’s respect for his deft communication, confident leadership, and his well-pressed, khaki trousers. Although Development was a little nerdy and shy, everyone admired his brilliance—from which he created an artificially intelligent search algorithm in just two lines of code. Super-hip Design was the cutest of them all. He seemed to win top accolades all by himself whether his siblings joined him on a project or not.
Everyone seemed to have their place in the project life-cycle at the web design agency; everyone but little Findability. Occasionally someone would notice his value to a project, but instead of giving him the care he deserved, they’d just fork over copious amounts of cash to ship him off to his sketchy uncle SEO, who tied him up and fed him keywords all day long. He spent so much time at uncle SEO’s that everyone started to think Findability was SEO, and subsequently became a little dubious of his importance.
Although Findability felt ignored or misunderstood, he knew that if he was given a chance, he could ensure that the brilliant work of his talented siblings reached their target audience. If only he were appreciated as much as the others, he could alleviate much of the everyday frustration that so many users experience when searching for information to solve their problems and satiate their curiosities.
But what could poor Findability do to be brought into the fold, to be loved and appreciated as much as his siblings? He just needed an advocate at the web design agency to promote his virtues.
That, dear reader, is where you come in. For the unfortunate moral to this sad little story is that we are the ones missing out by not making Findability a priority in what we do. There’s much to gain if only we recognize its value.
Why You Should Care About Little Findability#section2
Despite its invaluable benefits to our work as web professionals, findability is tragically misunderstood, or worse—overlooked entirely. Perhaps we get so caught up in our respective disciplines that it’s simply lost in the shuffle. Maybe findability is on our radar but carries a negative stigma because it’s perceived as search engine duping SEO. Either way it seems that findability is left in the cold because we don’t understand it and don’t see where it fits into our process.
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.
A website that ignores findability is whispering into the wind, hoping that someone passing by might catch a hint of its message. To further complicate the chances of reaching your target audience, a cacophony of other websites are vying for the same commodity—attention.
Findability is a multifaceted subject that touches every sub-discipline of our industry. Because each member of a web production team has a part to play in making a website more findable—including project managers, information architects, copywriters, designers, developers, and usability experts—it can’t be put off to the end of a project and it can’t be pawned off on uncle SEO, who will micro-focus on search. To do so is a waste of time and money. There’s more bang for your buck in educating everyone on your team about the boons of findability, and their role in achieving its goals.
Speaking of bucks, there’s money to be made by finding a place for findability in your project life-cycle. The more findable your content is, the more likely it will be the commercial success you’d hoped. Any client that has hired you or your agency to create a website that will connect them with their audience will appreciate the integration of findability strategies into your services. It could be what separates you from the other guys, and helps you win projects at higher bids because of the value it adds.
Bottom-line benefits make findability an easy sell to a production team and clients alike. They can be summed up with a simple equation:
findable c profits
What’s not to like about that? But in order for findability to be effective, it needs to be understood and embraced by all who plan, design, and build the web.
Rally the Troops#section3
To become an advocate of findability in your organization you’ll need to have a sense of the role each team member plays in its support.
Project Managers#section4
A project manager’s understanding of the project life-cycle, and talent for coordinating disparate members of the team, are key to getting findability the attention it deserves. If a project manager understands the value of findability to the business and communication objectives of a project, she’ll make sure everyone else understands, too. She can also educate the client on how the team will make the website successful by focusing on findability each step of the way. It’s an easy way to make it onto your client’s Christmas card list.
Information Architects#section5
Much of what an information architect does already addresses the second goal of findability: to help people find the content they seek within a website. IAs do their darned best to understand the target audience’s behaviors so they can devise systems that will best facilitate content retrieval.
Why not go a step further and help users find the content they seek on the site before they arrive? Using tools like Google’s Adwords keyword research tool or WordTracker, IAs can discern which terms should be integrated into the site’s content to help users find the site through search.
Sites that use tagging systems like Magnolia, Flickr, and Digg also provide insight into search behaviors, as each user defined tag illuminates the way in which users label content for retrieval. Simply search for a term you think people might use to find your site, then check out the tags that are associated with the items returned. It’s like peering inside your users’ heads!
Because information architects have a more intimate knowledge of the content they’re organizing than a third-party SEO company, they can assemble a master list of keywords and phrases to help users find the site. The copywriter can then integrate the keywords and phrases into new or existing content. The keyword master list should also be shared with developers, so they can mark up the content with semantically meaningful tags, to communicate the importance of these terms to search engines.
Information architects can also plan to include tools to promote findability, such as site-wide search systems, tag clouds, “tell a friend” messaging systems, and links to share content on social networking sites.
Copywriters#section6
A copywriter must carefully integrate keywords into the site’s content without stuffing the page. If a keyword appears too often or without articles, prepositions, and other words common to natural language, search engines might suspect that the content has been dishonestly loaded to attract search traffic. There’s no need to over-stack the deck; just incorporate the keywords where it seems natural to connect with your audience via search engines.
Of course, writing brilliant content is the biggest findability aphrodisiac. It promotes return visits to your site, and encourages your audience to tell others about it. That’s why a good copywriter is worth her weight in gold!
Designers#section7
A good designer directs a user’s gaze like a Jedi performing mind tricks on unsuspecting storm troopers. Through the power of contrast a designer shows users where to look, and in doing so, can help them discover tools that will foster findability.
Elements such as the search box, RSS feeds, sitemap link, or mailing list subscription form are all key to helping users find what they seek, and rediscover the site later. Mailing list and feed subscribers are likely to return often to revisit content they found valuable or discover new content. The more frequently a user returns, the more likely they are to complete one of your business goals such as buy a product, make a donation, or get involved with your cause.
Developers#section8
Developers—or more generically anyone who builds web pages—are central to findability, as they construct the conduit for our online messages. The way content is delivered can make the difference between findability bliss and the misery of obscurity.
Web standards and findability have a closely intertwined, symbiotic relationship. Semantic markup helps define the information hierarchy of your content so search engines can more accurately understand your message and direct users your way. The mass of redundant formatting code that web standards eliminates from pages improves the ratio of content to code, which can provide a modest search engine ranking boost to your site and expedite indexing.
Building content to be accessible to disabled users and those on alternative platforms helps ensure that roadblocks do not impede search engine indexing. A progressive enhancement approach to building interfaces that use JavaScript or Flash is an important part of clearing these roadblocks. Search engines won’t be able to see content loaded or hidden by JavaScript, and won’t as accurately understand the information hierarchy of content trapped in Flash movies.
Microformats are a powerful tool developers can use to make content portable to other platforms and devices. For example, event and contact information marked up with hCalendar and hCard respectively can be migrated to applications such as Google Calendar or downloaded to desktop software using the Operator toolbar. Portable content can be kept at your audience’s fingertips to be found when it’s needed most.
Tim Berners-Lee’s grand vision for the web was to keep it open to all users and accessible to the scripts and machines that serve us. That’s the path on which we’ve placed ourselves as advocates of web standards, and it’s one that will also move us towards a more findable Web.
Usability Experts#section9
Usability experts inherently pursue findability by evaluating the degree to which a site is navigable. They can also evaluate how easy it is to find the site via search engines and check page rankings on target keywords that were defined by the information architect.
Traffic analysis tools like Google Analytics, Mint, and CrazyEgg provide detailed information about user behavior on a website. Usability experts can use these tools to identify findability pitfalls, learn where users are or aren’t clicking and what content is most relevant, and even watch videos of remote user sessions using ClickTale. Traffic analysis tools provide valuable information that helps improve findability long after the launch of a site.
The Orphan Finds His Place#section10
Regardless of your discipline, there’s a place for findability in your work. By giving it proper consideration in each step of your project life-cycle, you can create more successful websites that will better serve your clients’ (and their users’) needs. Although the unfortunate story of the sad orphan named Findability had a gloomy start, it needn’t end the same way.
One day a smartly dressed employee of the web design agency discovered little Findability sulking in his cubicle.
“Hey, little fella. Why so glum?”
“No one really gets me. Heck, people don’t even seem to know I exist!”
“Well, I know who you are. You’re Findability! Don’t you help connect people with the information they seek?”
Immediately Findability perked up, surprised that a friendly stranger had recognized him.
“Yeah, that’s exactly what I do!”
With a warm smile, the agency employee said, “Come with me young man. I’d like to introduce you to my team.”
I feel at a core level SEO and findablity is same. It is just that few people have abused the system and it got bed name.
Everything concerning optimization, be it SEO or tinkering with YSlow, needs to be done carefully, but after everything else is done. Well written code and content already make your site usable as well as findable in most cases, so don’t overdo it.
A List Apart got where it is now by regularly publishing quality content. I’d imagine that most of the page views come from direct links or bookmarks, but I originally found the site through Google while searching for CSS tutorials, and I believe none of the keywords used were in the title or meta tag or in the URL.
… but I don’t think it’s really a different entity (as long as your site is reasonably usable too)
And from each criterion I will attempt to implement functionality to my future website. I still have to give the idea more thought, though what could be more simpler?
I think the difference I see is that ‘SEO’ is aimed at driving traffic to your site, to boost rankings and revenue, whereas ‘findability’ is enabling people who want the content on your site to get to it.
Yes, a significant part of this involves getting high SERP rankings, but it also includes factors such as:
* descriptive search results, so that people can see exactly what they’re getting from a link
* getting links (natural and search-engine) to point to deep pages rather than the home page, so visitors can jump straight to the meaty content
* site navigability, so that visitors can find the content they’re after, no matter what part of your site they arrive at.
I suppose the flip-side is that with findability, the customer-focused approach, we _only_ want visitors whose needs are specifically matched by our content – whereas SEO, the website-focused approach – wants to just grab armfuls of visitors, no matter what they are actually looking for.
bq. I suppose the flip-side is that with findability, the customer-focused approach, we only want visitors whose needs are specifically matched by our content — whereas SEO, the website-focused approach — wants to just grab armfuls of visitors, no matter what they are actually looking for.
Nicely said, Stephen. (I wonder if some SEO practitioners would disagree?)
This was a really good read. I think, if nothing else, it put a lot of the more important components of a successful web project in one place. In the past, a lot of web teams I’ve worked with had very isolated roles. The PM just mediated updates from the team to the client, developers took deliverable and developed with their heads down, designers just handed off designs and moved on. But this article really seems to point out that everyone one a team is interdependent and the most important thing is to work together to create the best project possible. I dig it.
As for the content of the article, I know it’s something that I’ve come across a lot in the industry and have had a hard time selling to a team, maybe that’s my fault. So you get stuck in with the attitude of “findability (or whatever the topic) is really important, but I can’t get any buy-in, so I’ll just have to try and do it myself.” And this creates the “heads-down developer” – doing something important like adding in Microformats (for example) and trying to cram it into the deadline because there was no time allocated for it.
I’m definitely going to save this article and try to get my team to read it over. Good read, thanks Aarron.
my2cents
bq. I’m not sure I understand the distinction between findability and usability. If you can’t find things you need, your site’s not usable.
The domains of findability and usability overlap in that both seek to help users find content within a site, but findability extends further to encompass methods that help users find the site and re-discover it later. Of course, SEO helps users find a site as does publishing your content on social networking sites. You can also let your audience spread the word for you by providing viral marketing tools (tell a friend, user generated reviews, etc). Using microformats to markup your content makes it easy for users to move important info somewhere they’ll find it later.
bq. A List Apart got where it is now by regularly publishing quality content. I’d imagine that most of the page views come from direct links or bookmarks, but I originally found the site through Google while searching for CSS tutorials, and I believe none of the keywords used were in the title or meta tag or in the URL.
You’re absolutely right, Kari. Quality content is the bedrock of findability. Generally when you’re writing content that solves a problem, entertains, or otherwise serves the needs of your audience you’ll attract the traffic you seek. There’s no need to stuff your pages with keywords, but it does help to research audience behaviors to see how they search so key areas like the title tag and headings connect with your audience. We already research our users and often create elaborate personas. Why not consider the psychology and behavior of search?
— Stephen: 10 4 good buddy.
— Tim: Thanks for the kind words.
I had a discussion with a co-worker earlier today about site maps and was wondering if anyone could provide one genuinely good reason why a site should have a sitemap.
I mentioned findability-related benefits like making the site structure transparent for users; providing users a quick overview of site content; and that it acts as a safety net in case the site search fails.
All these excuses failed to convince my co-worker the use of a site map and was left with her saying something along the lines of “I don’t think I’ve ever used a site map before” and “If I can’t find what I’m looking for with the search, then I’d leave the site”.
I hoped Findability might be personified as someone more aggressive, waving his hands in the air, and not so passive. However, it really does take a lot of effort from everyone involved on the team to make this guy possible. Findability is very sensitive, and one little change in the UI or keyword density might break his heart and drive him away whimpering.
I also agree that A List Apart knows Findability very well. I’m glad the site isn’t muddled with bad content, like a bad made-for-adsense Website. So many enemies of Findability exist today! He sure is exploited for cash, poor guy.
Aside form the convenience it offers users who’ve lost their way or are in search of something specific, a sitemap page provides search engines a central location from which to index the site.
I’ve noticed active/avid internet users are comfortable with search as navigation whereas you more infrequent or “old school” audience is not. A sitemap gives those folks who just plain want to see a map their tool of choice. On my latest design I’ve been offering a site-map-like ‘navigate’ link which displays a streamlined site map in a modal dialog box. Feedback has been great so far…
Thanks for the input Aarron. I’ll make sure to add that to my list of reasons for opting for a sitemap.
@*mahalie mahalie*, is your sitemap similar to that seen on “NY Mag”:http://nymag.com/ ? Also, when you speak of feedback, are you referring to what people say? or is it based on actual site statistics?
Thanks again guys for the input.
this text here is just amazing! One of the most important themes since I started my blogs!
??No one really gets me?? (from the article)
??I’m not sure I understand the distinction between findability and usability?? (from first comment)
I think I got the point of the article and like the ideas. However, I’d preferred less fairy tale but more structured explanation of what findability really is, so readers could *find* more interest in it.
if a site sees search engine as its main (or sole) source of traffic, then findability = SEO. However there are many ways for content to be discovered completely outside the world of search engines.
I work with academic content. So the people who are likely to be interested in what we publish are not going to look for it on google, but rather on specialized sites, in journal bibliographies, in scientific bookmark sharing sites, etc.
so we try to make sure that all content is correctly described, not necessarily to be picked up by search engines, which happens as a side benefit, but rather to make our content easy to find.
The acronym SEO appears 7 times in the article (and numerous times in the discussion). What does it mean?
“Findability is to Search Engine Optimization (SEO) as “web standards”? is to “table layouts.”?
The analogy from the intro of this article doesn’t make any sense, especially given the response from the author in the comment section. Is SEO a bad example of Findability? Faindability and SEO are methods to help user to find content. Though in recent years, the two have more overlapping.
I’m not sure why the distinction between findability and usability. Findability is a subset of usability. A well designed site with usability(navigation, visual cue, word choice etc) in mind will help user to find content easier, present and return. Could you elaborate on your answer below?
“The domains of findability and usability overlap in that both seek to help users find content within a site, but findability extends further to encompass methods that help users find the site and re-discover it later”
As for “Quality content is the bedrock of findability:” while i agree with this statement, however it’s a different subject matter from usability/findability jargons. There are sites i frequent for pure content purpose. These sites are so poorly designed in terms of coding, graphic, and usability. A site with great content will get a user base regardless, not because how “usable” it is. The exposure/traffic is gained from the community, than the site design/advertising itself. It’s the same reason why i go to this rundown restaurant located in a hard to find spot. i’d sacrifice convenience over great food. yes, i’d prefer if it were nicer decorated and easier to get to, but since that has no effect on the food, i don’t care.
Lastly, as for Findability, i find this article to be much more effective (less fluff, more substance)
http://www.alistapart.com/articles/ambientfindability
bq. The analogy from the intro of this article doesn’t make any sense
It’s what we call a “fun” analogy, not meant to be over-scrutinized or taken _too_ seriously.
bq. Is SEO a bad example of Findability?
Nope, SEO is an integral part of findability (“here’s an illustration that may help explain”:http://aarronwalter.com/presentations/sxsw08/pix/findability-flower.png). Historically many in the industry have hyper-focused on SEO and not given consideration to the many other ways in which we can help our audience connect with our content (see my earlier comment for examples). This article is not advocating disregard of SEO. On the contrary, it’s recommending we take a more holistic approach to findability to integrate the many sub-disciplines of our industry to better connect with our users.
Sorry you didn’t connect with the metaphor. As Jeffrey said, it was meant to add humor. If you’re in search of practical solutions to make your sites more findable, that’s what my book is all about.
bq. As for “Quality content is the bedrock of findability:”? while i agree with this statement, however it’s a different subject matter from usability/findability jargons. There are sites i frequent for pure content purpose.
Me too! And wouldn’t it be great if those sites packed with valuable content were more findable so others can find them too? In my view, we need to stop thinking of our craft from the perspective of our compartments and start seeing the big picture. Why can’t we publish sites that have great content, are built semantically, are usable, and wonderfully findable all at once? As someone commented earlier, A List Apart is a perfect example. There’s no need to sacrifice or settle for anything less.
bq. Lastly, as for Findability, i find this article to be much more effective (less fluff, more substance) http://www.alistapart.com/articles/ambientfindability.
You’ve got good taste! Peter Morville’s article is a perfect compliment to these ideas.
… but i couldn’t get past the stupid orphan story .. i was reading it, going yah yah yah ok ok get to the good stuff …
i didn’t make it.
what a ridiculous way to start an article like this. i don’t read things like this over my evening coffee, this is work-related. i was hoping i’d learn something, but the bs got in the way.
what’s that they say in your rather unique country? “cut to the chase” !!
@gene lu
bq. All these excuses failed to convince my co-worker the use of a site map and was left with her saying something along the lines of “I don’t think I’ve ever used a site map before”? and “If I can’t find what I’m looking for with the search, then I’d leave the site”?.
Yes, but fortunately there are a lot of people out there who aren’t as lazy or helpless as your colleague.
Another classic case of “I don’t use this, therefore no-one uses this”, and as wrong here as anywhere. For people who are prepared to use a couple of brain cells and a modicum of effort, a (well-designed) sitemap can be very useful – both for locating a particular page/section, and also for understanding the scope and remit of a website.
Getting the entire agency on board with these types of issues is such an uphill battle.
This is a great guide to start with though. Thanks.
I appreciate your discussion on the issue of “findability” because it focuses on the basic reason people use the web – to find information. As web designers and developers, it’s so easy to get caught up in making the site look good and other factors, we can lose track of the fact that people are looking for information.
The article was so dense and intimidatingly structured that I didn’t bother reading it!
An article about findability should be simple to digest, similar to “Don’t Make Me Think”:http://www.amazon.com/Dont-Make-Me-Think-Usability/dp/0321344758/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1206726043&sr=8-1&t=katwebdes-20 by Steve Krug.
Perfect starting-guide. (:
This is how “tech” writing should be: fun, easy and be read in 5 minutes withouth a headache
cheers
*A well designed page allows for appropriate xxxxxxxability*.
Replace xxxxxxx with access, find, use, whatever.
Though I really believe putting words on things does help to understand them but insisting on a distinction between findability and usability for more than about 3 seconds is a waste of time. And I have not yet met an accessibility (meaning for handicapped folks like colorblind me) issue whose correct solution was not a generic usability improvement.
*I need to learn how to generate site maps since they matter for SEO purposes*.
_And hide them from visitors_. My interpretation is that I need not confront my visitors with my sitemap.
To me they are a sign that the designer knows the site is hard to navigate and that visitors are going to get lost. I always thought the ‘home’ link was the best ‘get me unlost’ tool. When I see ‘site map’, I am likely to ‘get lost’ in the ‘scram, go find a well designed page’ sense unless I am really compelled to use the site.
I tend to agree with Brandon that focusing overmuch on usability vs findability might be putting too fine a point on the difference between them, but i do think there is something to be said for a real difference.
I work in instructional design, and one of the things we spend a lot of time thinking about is how to make information meaningful to the learner. The best way I know how to do that is to map information to a learner’s internal landscape–to make what she already knows about the world apply to what I’m telling her.
Findability is rather like that in my mind. A site may be perfectly and logically usable, but it doesn’t necessarily mean that the structure maps to my landscape–it doesn’t mean that it necessarily makes sense to *me*, based on how I would have organized it. So findability seem to be about creating ways for different people with different approaches to content/information to come upon the same material in a way that is logically or inherently meaningful to them, whether that means tagging content in various ways or providing alternate navigation sturctures, etc.
there i want to say it,s a great article.
“The domains of findability and usability overlap in that both seek to help users find content within a site, but findability extends further to encompass methods that help users find the site and re-discover it later”?
I love the article. It explains beautifully the importance of findability and the range of people that have to contribute to making it happen. However something I would like to add to the responsiblities of the developer is providing readable URLs. URL’s that give the user an idea of what the subject matter or content of a certain page is so that he or she can choose the right URL from the list of search results. It certainly is one of the “methods that help users find the site and re-discover it later”? don’t you think?
The emerging world of AJAX and ‘Web 2’ sharply bring into focus the willingness of too many webmasters to sacrifice both findability and usability, apparently in exchange for dramatic effect.
We have had the same issues, and continue to have them, with Flash and Java.
I’ve just spent the last year part-time developing an AJAX solution to navigation, in the hope that the promise of interactivity is not lost from the webspace to yet another plugin technology, as a side effect of poor findability.
HTML 5 gives a sniff of a promise to AJAX and navigation, but we’ll be a long time getting there in practice, even if all the major browser vendors cooperate.
A further issue in usability and findability in AJAX is overweight applications. The web in spite of broadband is still, and will always be as a serial network, subject to the speed constraint of the slowest link, often grinding down below dail-up speeds.
Add a heavy application, whether it’s AJAX, Flash or Java, and you’re lost for a very long time between where you’ve been and where you might get. Where you are at present still gets very boring after about 10 seconds.
We should not lose sight of the time domain in findability! Users simply bail out altogether before about 20 seconds.
After reading this article I was compelled to write and say how much I enjoyed it. You had some great insights and I believe that all people who work in our field should read this artice.
I know I’m going to share this article with my Creative Design team.
I also enjoyed the article from an artistic stand point. Often I find the only time I have to read about new ideas, thoughts, and opinions in our field is over my lunch break. So, it was with welcome surprise that this article wasn’t just another dry reading.
Great job.
You can expect one more customer for you book sales.
This article was a little long winded but the point is well taken. Findability and SEO are NOT the same. In fact some ranking fanatics can actually hurt a site’s findabilty by focusing too much on boosting their Google ranking with irrelevant keywords. High rankings on search engines are nice but they don’t always guarantee success.
A basic understanding of optimization is important for a copywriter to be able to write text which is organized in a manner which google is known to respond positively to. The most influential writing for optimization, has actually not been optimized in the sense of keyword density, but so interesting, that it became a magnet for bringing traffic into a site.
I’d agree that high rankings on search engines don’t always guarantee success. On the other hand, low rankings on search engines can pretty much guarantee an ongoing ad spend directly to search engines, and that’s pretty much forever.
Of course, there are always other sites linking to the website, but that means that visitors necessarily need to visit those sites just to find the link.
Can this be an optimum scenario? I think not. I think we need to deal with the medium with which we’re working, and not just part of it.
hey – great post. this is the stuff i struggle with every day. clients seem to get it when we discuss the nuts and bolts of SEO – you have to create better content and improve the interface elements of your site to improve conversions… for people and crawlers. but agencies focused on whizzy things and rigid project management schemas seem to have a tougher time selling it in…. it doesn’t really make sense, unless the be all and end all of a site build is to design it, deliver it and then cut and run. basically, when content production’s concerned, then i think most agencies aren’t built to hold the hands of clients and see them through the lifecycle of a site for the long term. more content savvy and consultancy is needed! you’ve kind of hit the nail on the head…
An excellent article that makes one think of how they build their web site. I would just like an example of how it works in practice.
Great comment Stephen Down. I would say that your comment is fairly accurate for most people who do SEO. To truly take SEO to the next level you need to be worried about those people who are your true target market. If in SEO you are just trying to get numbers up and are strictly getting more and more people to the site without having those people be truly legitimate customers you aren’t doing the site much benefit. We want true conversions. In order to get your true conversions FINDABILITY and SEO need to fused into one major effort. Findability really is important and should be taken seriously.
Updating sitemaps can become such a hassle, but the truth is that they are still kind in the findability game
Whem I’m using wordpress I always use a dynamic plugin that updates and pings search engines after each post! Ahh.. wordpress spoils us
Nowadays it’s almost impossible to have a wordpress blog that google DOESN’T FIND automatically after a week, however it’s still vital to submit sitemaps