This document summarizes a human-first approach to SEO and web design. It emphasizes focusing on users rather than search engines, with collaboration between teams like UX, content, and development. Key points include designing for performance by optimizing images and removing unnecessary JavaScript, as well as creating well-structured content. The overall message is that a human-first approach prioritizes the user experience over search engine optimization tricks.

1. A Human’s First Approach to
SEO and the Web
by Jeff Whitfield

2. Web Architect
Web Designer + Web Developer + UX Generalist + Consultant

3. “Yeah…I'm just not
sure about that
keyword placement.
We typically like to see
a keyword density
above 5%, so if you
could try to keep it
above that, that would
be great."

5. Is this good for Google?

6. Google First
Mobile First
Content First
Users First
Screens First
Empathy First

7. Humans First
Think like a human!

8. Artificial Intelligence

9. IBM Watson

10. 2011

11. Watson vs Google
• IBM's Watson is designed to deliver
one precise answer.
• Google is more about browsing
content than delivering one
answer.

12. Conversational UI

13. – Nicolas Dessaigne, CEO of Algolia
“Search is a conversation you have with
your users, and the future of search is
conversational UI. Not just using your
voice as an input, but having a real, fluid
conversation. We are already at work to
make that a reality.”
https://thenextweb.com/?p=1056048

14. Google Webmaster Guidelines
• Make pages primarily for users, not for search engines.
• Don't deceive your users.
• Avoid tricks intended to improve search engine rankings. A
good rule of thumb is whether you'd feel comfortable explaining
what you've done to a website that competes with you, or to a
Google employee. Another useful test is to ask, "Does this help
my users? Would I do this if search engines didn't exist?"
• Think about what makes your website unique, valuable, or
engaging. Make your website stand out from others in your field.

15. Focus on what visitors want,
NOT what Google wants!

16. How do users use search engines?
• Keyword research
• Keyword phrases used between searches
• Analytics can only tell you so much
• Integrate more UX based research

17. Ask the question:
“Why?”

18. Quality work requires
collaboration

19. User Experience
Content Strategy
SEO Social Media
Marketing
Development
Design

20. Google AMP
Accelerated Mobile Pages

27. – John Gruber (Daring Fireball)
“If you are a publisher and your web pages
don’t load fast, the sane solution is to fix
your ____ing website so that pages load
fast, not to throw your hands up in the air
and implement AMP.”
https://goo.gl/J1Ox1Y

28. – Alex Kras - “Please Make Google AMP Optional”
“My issue with AMP being used inside
Google the Search engine, that I use very
heavily on my mobile phone. My issue is
with the fact that I have to add two extra
click to my browsing experience on Mobile
Google, to get the desired behavior.
“I am not asking for Google to get rid of
AMP, but it would be VERY NICE if I could
disabled it.”
https://goo.gl/WtXq6r

29. Titles and Descriptions

37. Design for
performance.

39. 155 requests
23.8MB transferred

40. Remove
superfluous
javascript.

42. – SonniesEdge - “A day without Javascript”
“The NY Times site loads in 561 ms and 957
KB without JavaScript. Holy crap, that’s
what it should be like normally. For
reference it took 12,000 ms (12 seconds)
and 4000 KB (4 MB) to load with JavaScript.
Oh, and as a bonus, you get a screenful of
adverts.
“A lot of images are lazy loaded, and so
don’t work, getting replaced with funky
loading icons. But hey ho, I can still read
the stories.”
https://goo.gl/mSxu1Q

43. Optimize
your images.

44. Responsive Images
• srcset attribute:
used to serve larger—but otherwise identical—
image sources to high resolution displays only
• picture element:
used when you need explicit control over which
source is shown at set viewport sizes
• Picturefill: a responsive polyfill
(https://scottjehl.github.io/picturefill/)

49. Content should be
well-structured.

53. Humans First Approach
• UX and Empathy based approach
• Focus on the needs of the user
• Collaboration is key
• Emphasis on design and performance
• Create well-written, well-structured content

54. Humans First
Think like a human!

55. Thank You!
@jeffwhitfield
jeff@soulcraftgroup.com