Building Findable Websites: Web Standards, SEO, and Beyond [Paperback]

Aarron Walter (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: February 23, 2008 | ISBN-10: 0321526287 | ISBN-13: 978-0321526281 | Edition: 1st

This is not another SEO book written for marketing professionals.  Between these covers you’ll find practical advice and examples for people who build websites aiming to reach their target audience. Each chapter will introduce you to best practices and fresh perspectives on how to accomplish these simple, yet indispensable goals:

• Help more people find your site

• Help users find content within your site

• Encourage return visits

The path this book travels through the villages of Web standards, accessibility, and contemporary technologies like Ajax, APIs, Flash, and microformats. You’ll find the big ideas behind these technologies and real world examples, illustrating that you don’t have to compromise the user experience to create search engine friendly, findable websites.

Although this book illuminates a broad range of findability strategies, one common theme pervades:
Web standards + compelling content = improved findability = more successful sites

You’ll find even more findability guidance on the book’s companion website (http://buildingfindablewebsites.com) including 5 bonus chapters.

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Aarron Walter is a faculty member in the Interactive Media Design department at The Art Institute of Atlanta, teaching courses on a variety of topics including Findability, Dynamic Web Applications, and User-Centered Interface Design. When not teaching, Aarron also runs a one man design/development consultancy in Athens, GA, and writes articles for online publications such as SitePoint.com and DMXZone.com. He blogs, builds and shares things at http://aarronwalter.com

Product Details

• Paperback: 249 pages
• Publisher: New Riders; 1st edition (February 23, 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0321526287
• ISBN-13: 978-0321526281
• Product Dimensions: 7.5 x 0.6 x 9.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 15.5 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (33 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #458,337 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #82 in Books > Computers & Technology > Internet & Web Culture > Search Engine Optimization

More About the Author

Aarron Walter (http://aarronwalter.com) is the Author of Building Findable Websites: Web Standards, SEOs and Beyond (http://buildingfindablewebsites.com), and co-author of InterACT With Web Standards: A holistic approach to web design (http://interactwithwebstandards.com). Aarron is the user experience design lead at MailChimp (http://mailchimp.com).

Aarron speaks at conferences on user experience design, findability, web standards, and the web design industry.

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

21 of 21 people found the following review helpful

4.0 out of 5 stars Content is still king April 22, 2008

By Allen Stenger

Format:Paperback

This well-written and informative book on getting your web site noticed by users boils the advice down to one sentence: "Your content should always be written for humans first, and search engines second!" It emphasizes building attractive content first, then removing any roadblocks that would prevent search engines from finding it.

The book is an interesting blend of high-level strategy and low-level techie tools and techniques. The mostly likely audience is actually webmasters more than web designers or marketers, although all would benefit from it. The most valuable part for me was the review of the many management tools, most of them free, available for studying your web site.

The web standards part doesn't really get a lot of attention in this book. No one today is going to seriously argue against following web standards. The advice in this book is limited to "use HTML elements for what they were designed for," with a promise that that will improve your search rankings. For example, it recommends using the various header levels to structure your document instead of just using boldface and bigger type, and it recommends using tables only for tabular date and using CSS for precise placement of a mosaic of elements.

A lot of what's here is not really about findability but about making your site worth finding, and about how to hold on to your audience once they've found the site. It covers techniques such as mailing lists (old technology but still very valuable), RSS feeds, user-generated content (such as product reviews), and blogs. The book makes the interesting point that authoring for search engines is very similar to authoring for the visually impaired. If you are careful to make your site accessible to humans, it will automatically be more accessible to search engines. There is specific advice on handling blogs, JavaScript menu systems, Shockwave Flash, and Ajax.

22 of 23 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Not just another SEO book July 9, 2008

By K. Mitchell

Format:Paperback

I went to the book store looking for a book on blogging and spotted this unusual title 'Building Findable Websites'. Within the first few moments of thumbing through the book, I knew I was going to get it. I already had several search engine optimization books, but this one talked about SEO and so much more. It even had a chapter on blogging.

What strikes me most about this book is that literally every page has website resources or bits of code. The second most striking this is the author does not fill page after page of why to do something. The whys are kept to the point and jump right into the hows. This book is not filled with dozens of interviews or inspirational stories though it does have real world examples which the author provides links to so the reader can get more detail. I really liked the example of BMW Germany getting blacklisted from Google for blackhat SEO tactics.

The author also has a great companion website to the book which includes 5 bonus chapters, the table of contents for the book, website tools and code used in the book. Since Amazon doesn't have a 'Search Inside' on this book, you can read the bonus chapters to get a feel for the book and the author. Also be sure and check out his blog at [...] where you can see samples of his work and a list of books he uses as references two of which I've decided to get as well.

After reading this book, I appreciate the difference between findability versus SEO. This book focuses on best practices and web standards of which SEO is only a part of.

18 of 19 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars SEO the right way March 20, 2008

By Brian Artka

Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase

The big buzz phrase for the past few years has been Search Engine Optimization(SEO). Companies are paying other companies millions of dollars to get, and keep their websites in the front of different keyword searches on the larger search engine sites. Is it worth it? In most cases... probably not. Anyone thinking about paying money to have someone make their site "SEO" friendly should read Building Findable Websites.

Being a web standards practitioner, I had great theories of how building a website the right way can take care of most of your SEO woes. After reading Aarron's book on the topic, my theories were solidified. having a website that is built semantically using XHTML, CSS and javascript will drastically make your web presence findable for your users and for the search engines.

Is your website still wrangling a table based layout with messy unreadable code? Before spending thousands on SEO enhancements, read this book. See what the buzz of Web Standards is about(if you have not already) and go from there; you will not be disappointed.