There’s a video on Google video right where John Battelle’s giving a seminar at Google New York. It’s not very often when you come across things this good for free. If you’re interested at all in the future of search this is a must watch!
Video: John Battelle at Google NY.
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.
If you’ve ever thought of launching an online company but thought there was just to much competition or someone else beat you to your idea don’t let that stop you. There’s always room for one more if you can do it better than those that have come before before you.
Take BubbleShare for example. They’re a brand new photo sharing application that’s really going to make some noise in an already overcrowded industry.
Why? Because they’re better than anything out there!
They don’t necessarily have the most features (most of which are useless anyways) but they’re easier to use and the user interface is second to none. It’s clean and very simple to navigate, and sometimes simple is all it takes, what’s the saying, “less is more”.
You can share your pictures without all the distractions. I’d prefer that they didn’t have the Google ads but hey, they’ve got to earn money somehow and I’m all for that. They don’t even require that you sign up for an account, can’t beat that.
I’ve just recently tried using Flickr, a photo sharing application that’s way overhyped and I’m not happy. Sure it’s the cool new “web 2.0″ company but the user interface is awful, it’s cluttered and it’s not easy to use. All I want in a photo sharing web site is a place that I can share my pictures with friends and family without all the distractions. Don’t get me wrong, Flickr does have it’s good point, but they’re more on a photo searching level then a photo sharing one.
My only complaint now is that I have to take the time to upload all my photos again.
Now they key phrase here is “do it better”. There’s no room for those who can’t outdo the ones that come before them. To be a player you have to do it better which means you either…
1) Build a better a product/brand.
2) Have a better user friendly interface.
3) Implement a more effective marketing strategy.
4) Create more content.
or…
5) Beat your competition on pricing.
Good luck!
UX Magazine launched it’s beta site the other day and I have to say they’ve missed the point. For a magazine that’s about user experience they sure haven’t done a very good job with the home page.
So what’s the problem? The layout!
The design is very well done, unique, and one of the best I’ve seen. The concept is great. But the user experience suffers with the layout.
The layout on the homepage is confusing, it’s hard to tell what’s what. What articles do I want to read? What category do they belong in? Where should I go next to find the information I’m looking for?
My advice. Just click one of the three buttons up top. Design, Tech, or Strategy. The rest of the layout is simple.
Yahoo! is giving me some really quirky results today with FireFox. It’s almost like they’re only showing me a fraction of the normal results. When I switch over to Internet Explorer everything is normal. Wonder if it’s a bug or something. Everything was fine last night. Hmmm….
Register.com search
Search for Cameron Olthuis
Just about any keyword I type in gets these weird results, even some big company names are nowhere to be found.
Update: I’m getting the same thing at home. This is strange, I need to do a little investigatory work and find out what’s going on.
Update: Things are semi back to normal, the quantity is there but the results have changed, must be a major update.
Cameron Olthuis is the Founder of Factive Media, an action sports media network. Follow his storyline and adventures of building an Internet empire here. Find out more about Cameron...
