SEO and Tabs

The company I work at for my day job just recently implemented tabs in their website page design. I found out because I happend to go on the website to look for something. Not a good way for a content manager to find out about a major UI interface.

As one of the staff responsible for a great number of programs with landing pages, I've had to scramble a little to figure out how to correct copy and best make it fit in with the new UI.

Each landing page now has an area of text at the top to provide some brief orienting introduction, then there are a complement of tabs underneath with each tab assigned a particular topic area or subsection of the project/service/product.

Tabs need to be concise for design esthetics and usability to the reader. We don't have yet guidelines for content length nor subhead formatting, etc. Which creates a bit of a pain point for me as I share content revisions with a very busy IT department.

The "about" tab is first, and provides some orientation to the reader about the value proposition and help them decide if they want to keep reading the next tabs. Then depending on the content and information that needs to be shared about the particular program or product, each following tab will have concise information about that pertinent sub-area. This is ideal for intuitive UI that helps the reader help themselves

These sort of changes are best implemented with a little key stakeholder discussion ahead of time, so that the content managers work with IT closely on effecting a smooth transition to the new UI. Something that didn't take place in this case. Make sure this doesn't happen to you.

So as part of my own self-education in regards to optimizing content in this new UI (tabs) environment, I am now reading up about tab navigation best practices and SEO for pages featuring tab navigation. It's not rocket science, I'm sure, but it doesn't hurt to scan the market and read up on it to make sure the bases are covered.

Here are some of the more interesting articles I discovered and a summary of why:

• The Eric Pender Blog, Tabs and SEO: Things You Need to Consider - the importance of focused content, ways to program/present tabs, deep linking content on tabs.
• The Simon Kenyon Shepard Blog, smartTabs: SEO Friendly Ajax Tabs - similar content on a site makes search engines work harder, the ease of sharing tab content, html anchors.
• The Tony Adam Blog, AJAX and Non-JavaScript Experiences for SEO Friendly Websites - importance of indexing tab content.

I will keep reading and if any nitty gritty how-to articles show up I'll post about them. What do you do to help make your tabs the best they can be? What reading do you suggest?