As developers, we have three primary goals in making websites findable:

1.Help people find your website.

2.Help people find what they are looking for once they arrive at your site.

3.Bring your audience back to your website.

Developers can make a tremendous impact on the findability of a website. The way a site is built is one of the most significant factors in how it draws search engine traffic, and keeps people browsing longer. How we write our markup, set up the server, and integrate content- and the plethora of powerful tools we are able to leverage or build-can bring in volumes of traffic and help users find exactly what they’re looking for once they’re arrived at the site.

Traditionally, findability has been the domain of marketing experts and information architects, both of whom have a lot to contribute to the initiative. But, if developers are not informed and involved in the findability process, many opportunities to make the site less visible or completely invisible to search engines.

It’s the developer’s job to keep his team aware of best practices and emerging technologies that could help make a site more findable. Accessibility, Web standards, microformats, search systems, RSS feeds, XML sitemaps and API’s are all powerful tools that only a developer is likely to be aware of and understand their benefits to a project.

SEO and Beyond: A Holistic Approach to Findability, DVD (Voices That Matter)

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