I've been looking around a lot lately at sites and extensions for Joomla (and even white papers), and a lot of it is focused around SEO. Search engine optimization. Now, I'm not saying that SEO is bad... Infact I do think it is important. But, is it as important as people make it out to be? I personally think it should be a secondary concern. There is another optimization that is BADLY needed for a very large number of sites.
EUO
Ok... I know what you're thinking... What is EUO? Well, quite simply it's End User Optimization. And yes, I did just make that up. What I mean by EUO is that a site should be aesthetically pleasing, and easy to navigate for end users. You shouldn't need to have a site map. You shouldn't need to have a FAQ about the site. Sadly, a lot of the sites (but not all) that praise good SEO have little to no EUO.
It's All About Interface
Back in the 1970's and 1980's, it was all about the interface. Since there were few resources that could be wasted for appeal, time and effort went into making applications intuitive and easy to use. Infact, this was so important, that a new field was born, "Human Factors". A human factors engineer would design and tweak the interface to be simple and easy to use, even for very complex systems. But in the dot-com era, it seems all of this was lost...
The Remaining Few
I'm not saying that nobody fills the roll of a human factors engineer in internet design today. In fact, I remember a certain lead developer from Joomla saying how the way he tests his interface is to show it to his mother. If she didn't understand it without explanation, it needed to be changed. This needs to be done to the web as a whole. Too many interfaces are designed by developers. What seems intuitive to a developer, can seem counter-intuitive to an end user.
SEO Is Not (THAT) Important!
So much focus is on SEO, but what is SEO? Many of the things that people tout as "SEO" really make a questionable difference in ranking. In my opinion, way too much emphasis is placed on SEO and not enough on EUO. Not to mention, for a site to be SEF, it should have some content... Give users a reason to visit, and stay at your site... Doing so will yield MUCH greater benifits than SEO could ever do. Remember, AT BEST, all SEO will do is get a user to your site. Don't forget about trying to keep him there...
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