A few quotes from a super nice and eye opening article.
Findability, Orphan of the Web Design Industry
by Aarron Walter
permalink: http://www.alistapart.com/articles/findabilityorphan
Project Managers
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
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.
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
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.
Designers
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
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.
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.
