Writing and designing for today’s web is about writing and designing for humans and robots.

Content must not only pique the interest and meet the needs of a site’s human visitors, but it must be equally nutritious to the Pac Man appetites of the search engines of Google, Yahoo, and others. Every search engine has an application — crawler, spider, or bot — that finds and follows the links of your site, sending back a list to a database, which is then analyzed by the search engine’s proprietary algorithm to rank your pages and serve up a search engine results page (or SERP, in the lingo). Optimizing your site for search requires having content, structure, and technology that help both the crawler move over the site and the search engine rank the results.

Search optimization is a mix of science and magic and a continually moving target. Even the search engine optimization (SEO) experts don’t agree on all techniques. And an .edu site is going to have different priorities for SEO than a business site that exists for e-commerce. But since many SEO techniques are easy and actually encourage good organization and content practices, adopting them as part of your site development and maintenance guidelines is not a waste of time, particularly in an era of belt-tightening for traditional marketing budgets. Here are seven tips gleaned from the realm of SEO to get you started:

1. Use descriptive page titles — We’re talking the TITLE tag here, and it’s one of the first things that both humans and robots encounter. Make sure your pages have descriptive titles with keywords. Simply repeating the name of your institution on every page is not sufficient. Each page should have a unique page title, with keywords (but not stuffed with keywords) relevant to the page content, front loaded with the words that matter most. Aim for no more than 66 characters and use title case.

2. Put effort into the most valuable meta tags — The meta description tag deserves your attention, not necessarily for its influence over rankings, but because its content can be what search engines display on SERPs. You want to control that display, not leave it up to the crawler’s best guess. It should be around 160 characters and be unique to each page. The meta keyword tag has been so abused with spamming that it has low to zero influence on search engines. If you use it, it should be different on every page. Simply repeating the same words in the keywords tag on every page of your site may look more spammy than legitimate to a search engine.

3. Use heading tags – Headlines are looked at with more importance by crawlers than body text. The H1, H2, and so on tags are a way to indicate headlines and their relative importance to search engines. In the dark ages before CSS, we were saddled with fixed heading sizes that were often too big or too small or otherwise ugly in the layout, so we sometimes used other tags (or even images, gasp) to style headlines. Now with CSS we can visually style H tags any way we like, and they can be used to add robot-readable structure to a web page. Heads should be both descriptive and have relevant keywords when possible.

4. Write one topic per page – This is a tip followed by most pro content developers. Not only does it help your human readers, but the algorithms that search engine crawlers use work best on one topic at at time. Keeping focused in your writing also makes it easier to come up with keywords and meta descriptions for a page. Since you’re sticking to one topic per page, you can also keep it short and get to to the point quickly, right? Headlines, subheads, and concise paragraphs are good SEO writing, and consistency among those helps search engine crawlers (and humans) understand your content.

5. Don’t be lazy with your links — The anchor text of a link gives descriptive information about the content of the link’s destination page and can influence search engine rankings. Lazily written “click here” links, for example, tell nothing about the destination page, but may get you a top ranking for “click here.” (Search “click here” in Google. Hello, Adobe.) Use keywords in the link text that are relevant to the destination page. And while you’re at it, pay attention to linking to the PDFs, videos, images, and similar assets that are all part of today’s sites. For example, a search engine cannot tell that’s the spring commencement video unless the link to it says “spring commencement video,” and it is placed next to text in the page about spring commencement. And, by the way, for similar reasons make sure all your images (including logos and images used as buttons) have appropriate text in their ALT tags.

6. Understand the search implications of technologies – This is a whole topic unto itself, but be aware of search implications of your technical choices. Flash for example, has improved in its ability to be indexed and to allow search engines to find the content and links embedded within Flash objects. But it’s unlikely that search engines will open themselves up to full compatibility with Flash, because that would also open the door to being gamed by an unethical optimizer. Current search engines don’t generally index Flash content on par with HTML. HTML pages will get ranked higher.

There are similar challenges with AJAX and JavaScript. Search engines can’t deal very well with the dynamic and “pageless” content that can be enabled by these technologies. The functional and stylish enhancements that JavaScript can bring to a site’s navigation can also block a search engine’s ability to build a model of the site’s link structure. Search engines can only see the initial page load. If AJAX is used to later alter that content, the new content won’t be seen by a search engine. There are techniques to deal with these issues that you may want to consider.

And finally, with the growing popularity of content management systems (CMS) in education, institutions are faced with a whole slew of additional considerations that affect search. For example, it’s not uncommon to “restart” a site within a CMS, generating a new URL structure for all the content. Search engines, however, have indexed your site using the previous URLs. You are effectively starting over at ground zero with search engines when you flip the CMS switch. Content management systems can also generate problematic URLs along with cloned and duplicated content, which also don’t make search engines happy. If you’re considering a CMS, questions to the vendor about how it supports search are in order.

7. Bring back the site map — And finally, have a good old site map page, a hierarchical list of all the links of the site. The popularity of providing site maps has waned, but they are good for SEO. For one thing, such an alternative link structure can help make up for issues being caused by JavaScript, AJAX, and other crawler blockers. Also including the site map’s links at /sitemap.xml and /sitemap.txt can help search engines understand your site’s structure.

Like all things web, developing for search optimization is a balance between human needs and the needs of technology. It can be challenging, but in many cases what works well for one — structure, conciseness, explanation, consistency — also benefits the other. Search optimized content can be a win win for human and robot.

On the heels of its recent privacy misstep, Facebook yesterday announced a new approach to site governance. It has published a set of proposed Facebook Principles intended to guide the future development of the service, and a Statement of Rights and Responsibilities that will define Facebook’s and user’s commitments to the site.

Perhaps more significantly, Facebook is asking for users to comment and vote on the documents, signaling a new openness to member participation in future policies. This may offer an opportunity to get other issues, such as group size limits, on the table.

More: Facebook news release

Adaptive Path President Peter Merholz recently started blogging at Harvard Business about the customer experience-driven business. In addition to being credited with coining the term “blog,” Merholz has worked with a wide range of clients in the areas of user experience, strategy, and design.

In his first post, Merholz writes: “…this isn’t about money — in my work, the biggest impact I’ve seen a customer experience mindset have is to help companies understand how they can better orchestrate existing elements to realize new value….This is about choreographing what you already have (technologies, people, offerings) to better respond to your customers’ needs and wants.”

Adapative Path’s clients are much more likely to be companies and corporations, but it occurred to me that you could substitute “students” for “customers” in the above. And in these economic times, who wouldn’t be on board with taking what you already have and better aligning it with your students’ goals and needs?

In his most recent post, Merholz examines how businesses see their customers and, unfortunately, how little they often understand them.

About working on a project with a large bank, Merholtz writes: “Buying financial products is challenging, because unlike physical goods, it’s hard to define what you want ahead of time….

“We realized that customers must satisfy three sets of requirements — functional (does the product meet my basic needs); intellectual (through comparison, am I confident I’m getting the best deal); and, crucially, emotional (could I have a relationship with this bank?).”

Again, drawing a parallel with the challenge of college selection: Does the college meet my basic needs (functional)? Through comparison, am I confident I’m getting the best university for me (intellectual)? Could I have a relationship with this college (emotional)?

The bank wanted to drive all applications for new products online, according to Merholz, but researching and listening to the customers revealed that they still wanted to be able to have a human relationship, either in person or on the phone. Continuing to provide that contact opportunity was a better strategy.

The bottom line here is that it’s not just who your customers/students are, but how they behave. And have you aligned your institutional processes with actual behaviors, not with labels and preconceived notions about your customers/students? Is your admissions strategy meeting the functional, intellectual, and emotional concerns of potential students?

The Publishing Trends Blog posts five interesting takeaways from “Youth and Creativity: Emerging Trends in Self-expression and Publishing,” a session of the O’Reilly Tools of Change Conference. This session focused on usage habits among teens who were using digital media as a means of self-expression but who weren’t considering design or art as possible careers or fields of study.

The takeaways:

• Teens don’t see buying a software program (like Adobe Photoshop) as a major “life event.” Whereas people in their twenties and thirties may sign up for classes and buy instruction manuals after purchasing a program, teens churn through many different technologies quickly, using programs only for what they need and then moving on.
• At the same time, teens feel as if they have mastered these programs. Westerman [one of the session presenters] pointed out that when he asks an adult, professional Photoshop user if she knows everything there is to know about Photoshop, that adult will usually answer, “No, I haven’t even scratched the surface.” Teens, on the other hand, will answer, “Yeah, I know Photoshop.” Nor are they concerned that they haven’t learned all the “right” ways of doing things with a program–they’re concentrated on the outcome, not the tool. They don’t ask, “How do I use the masking tool?” They ask, “How can I create a cool rain effect?”
• That’s not to say that teens aren’t asking for help. They are! But they’re going to their peers online or typing queries into Google. There’s a return of the “apprenticeship”–teens learning skills from their more knowledgable peers, actively seeking critiques of their work, and really adopting a craft mentality. Learning is a process of watching and doing on the fly. “There’s no more learning curve,” Westerman said.
• Any niche site can become a social hub–teens aren’t just using Facebook for social networking. One subject in the study, “David,” spent most of his time on the “Silverfish Longboarding” discussion boards. (A longboard is a type of skateboard.) These microcommunities give teens, who tend to define themselves through 2 or 3 major interests when creating online personas, a sense of belonging.
• Teens aren’t using the fanciest, newest technology. Most of those surveyed had fairly old computers and older versions of software. They were making do with what they had. And they were not pirating software. One teen, “Gina,” bought a copy of Adobe Photoshop with her friend at Costco, and the girls took turns using it at home, since they only had one license.

A report just released by the Pew Internet and American Life Project shows the age of Internet users is rising, with Generation X’ers leading when it comes to online banking, shopping, and researching health information, and the percentage of users from 70-75 years old showing the biggest increase (up from 26% of that age group going online in 2005 to 45% currently).

While middle-aged Gen X’ers and older users approach the Internet as a tool, younger users (teens and Gen Y’ers) see it more as a source of entertainment.  Among users 12-17 years old:

• 78% play online games
• 57% watch videos online
• 69% send instant messages
• 65% use social networking sites
• 59% download music
• 55% have created a profile on a social networking site
• 49% read blogs
• 28% have created their own blog
• 10% visit a virtual world

Access to the full report is here.

Researchers from the University of British Columbia’s Sauder School of Business have found that the color red increases both attention to detail and risk aversion.  Blue, however, produces a strong sense of openness to new things and enhances creative thinking.

These variances are caused by different unconscious motivations that red and blue activate, says [researcher Juliet] Zhu, noting that colour influences cognition and behavior through learned associations.

“Thanks to stop signs, emergency vehicles and teachers’ red pens, we associate red with danger, mistakes and caution,” says Zhu, whose previous research has looked at the impact of ceiling height on consumer choices. “The avoidance motivation, or heightened state, that red activates makes us vigilant and thus helps us perform tasks where careful attention is required to produce a right or wrong answer.”

Conversely, blue encourages us to think outside the box and be creative, says Zhu, noting that the majority of participants believed incorrectly that blue would enhance their performance on all cognitive tasks.

“Through associations with the sky, the ocean and water, most people associate blue with openness, peace and tranquility,” says Zhu, who conducted the research with UBC PhD candidate Ravi Mehta. “The benign cues make people feel safe about being creative and exploratory. Not surprisingly it is people’s favourite colour.”

In a study of more than 600 people, the two researchers tracked performance over a range of tasks that included solving anagrams, designing toys, and assessing marketing.  Not Exactly Rocket Science has a nice summary of one experiment in which subjects were asked to judge two versions of an ad for a digital camera, one providing specific and detailed information and the other showing generic travel images (things like maps).   When the ads appeared against a red background, subjects were more receptive to the detailed version; when they appeared against a blue background, subjects were drawn to the visual, if more generic, version.

These findings also reveal another interesting implication for integrating color with messaging and packaging:

[P]eople were more receptive to a new, fictional brand of toothpaste that focused on negative messages such as “cavity prevention” when the background colour was red, whereas people were more receptive to aspirational messages such as “tooth whitening” when the background colour was rendered in blue.

The release on Science Daily  is here.