2006 - The Year of the User
I could write a whole blog entry on my predictions for the coming year. But I won’t. Most of my predictions have already been spoken for anyways so there’s no point. But I do have one that I feel passionate enough about that I’d like to share…
In 2006 the term SEO is all but dead!
User experience is in!
To long have we gotten away with tricking the search engines into thinking generic seo’d sites should rank best. You now have to prove yourself to the users first. Give them a reason to love you and you give the search engines a reason to love you. Don’t optimize or build anything for the search engines, optimize and build for the potential users, do this and do it better than anyone else and you’ll quickly find yourself ranked among the best.
It’s about providing the best possible solutions to your target demographic, aka the user, aka the customer. If and when you do this the search engines will follow.
Sure there will always be little things you can do behind the scenes to help with your rankings, but it won’t be enough, the main objective is going to be, and always will be the user experience.
Dare we coin a new phrase “UEO - User Experience Optimization”? Is the industry even ready yet? After all, the term SEO is just starting to become familiar to the mainstream. Maybe we just a need a better description.
You know, this really isn’t even that hard of a prediction, we’ve seen this coming for years. The signs are everywhere. If we have one thing to look forward to in 2006, it’s that our SERPs won’t be filled with junk anymore. However, I hope we all have something a little more exiting to look forward to.
If the major search engine players want to remain the “major players” they’re going to have to start giving the better results that we want. They already know this, and they’re going to do anything and everything possible to make it happen. In fact, they’re already well on the way.
With all the shakeups, updates, algo changes, and information we’ve got right from the search engines this year it’s common sense, they want to give better search results.
Did I just put myself out of a job with this post? No I don’t think so. There’ll always be a need for good search engine rankings, it’s just that now they’re coming about in a different way. Besides, I’ve been focusing more on the user experience for awhile now, SEO is just to small a piece of the bigger pie.
Cameron Olthuis is the Founder of