95% of internet users (750 million people) searched in October 2007.
Web developers generally make sure their applications are accessible by the major browsers. After all, [Internet Explorer users represent 54% of those online and Firefox users are about 37% of those online], so you’d be cutting out a large chunk of potential customers if your app didn’t work for visitors using those browsers. EDITED: This number is obviously reflective of one data point, but as someone in the comment points out, it can vary. For instance, Wikipedia has IE at about 75% share. My visitors use IE just over 50% of the time and Firefox nearly 40%.
But what about that 95% who are searching for you? Doesn’t it make sense to make sure your application is accessible via search as well?
Search engine optimization (SEO) is sometimes seen in a bad light, filled with spamming and deception and trickery. But what’s sometimes called “SEO” is more accurately called “spamming”. True SEO is much more akin to making sure your pages render on Firefox and when done well, increases not only findability, but accessibility and usability as well. Pages designed using SEO principles render well on mobile devices, screen readers, for those with slow connections who turn off images, for novice users who are still on older browsers, and for savvy users who block Flash and javascript.
If you’re developing web applications and you want to make sure your code is well-optimized for search, where do you start? You can check out these resources:
- Nathan Buggia’s MIX08 Presentation: Advanced SEO For Developers
- SEO and asp.net
- Colin Cochrane’s asp.net/SEO posts
- A List Apart: Findability
A Conference for Web Application Developers: All About SEO
For a comprehensive deep dive into infrastructure issues and solutions for both the Microsoft and LAMP stacks, diagnostic tools and checklists, and practical tips for building web apps that searchers can easily find, check out the Search Marketing Expo Developer Day conference, happening June 4th in Seattle. We’ll end the day with in-depth, technical site reviews that bring together everything presented throughout the day.
Interested in speaking? Submit your pitch now!
If you are a web developer, I’d love to hear about the issues you are most interested in learning more about. Let me know in the comments!