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Originally Posted by A.N.Onym
But in reality, SEO is just a fraction what needs to be done on the website. And just having a search-engine friendly website won't get you much, because you need to make the site human-friendly as well. That's where usability, accessibility and healthy marketing comes into play.
Sure, just studying SEO may help, but you'd rather study the whole picture with efficient web design, usability, accessibility, copywriting, online marketing, etc.
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SPOT ON!
The future of the internet lies with Accessibility & Usability - for some reason, pretty much neglected since the birth of the Internet.
Accessibility
Legislation has been in place in most countries for years now (Since 1st October 1999 in the UK) declaring that websites must reach at least the WAI-A certification for Accessibility. So now it is a legal requirement, big companies are finally starting to wake up to Accessibility and do something about it.
There has only been one lawsuit so far to my knowledge and that was a blind chap in Sydney taking action against the Sydney Olympics website (please correct me if I'm wrong). There was a threat of two lawsuits against companies in the UK by the RNIB (Royal National Institute for the Blind) but in return for anonymity these companies sorted their websites out.
Don't get me wrong, I'm not hoping for more lawsuits around the world, I'm just trying to spread the message that Accessibility can actually improve a website instead of just being something 'you have to do'.
For example,
- Search engines can generally crawl Accessibile websites easier since they are laid out using cleaner code (usually CSS)
- You are not restricting access to your site to any particular Browser, Platform or Screen Resolution
Usability
Usability is the second big part of the Internet's future since if users cannot find what they are looking for on your website quickly, they are just going to return to the search listings and click the next link.
This makes it arbitrary if you come 1st or 50th in the search engines listings, because if users can't find what they're looking for, you're stuffed!
Additionally, if you're really high up in paid listings (such as AdSense) and people can't find what they're looking when they've clicked on your site, you've just thrown your money away!
So there you go, Accessibility & Usability are the future of the Internet for me!
On a related note, I'm currently putting some Accessibility & Usability tutorials together on my website, so if anyone's interested then have a look at this page:
http://www.pinklink.biz/tutorial-signup.cfm