Permaculture Principles in ux and seo

The essence of "good SEO" lies in content that solves the reader's problem faster and better than competitors. This means making information easy to find, putting the answers front and center, and including more helpful information that makes the reader feel confident in their next step.

As a certified permaculture design specialist, I am obsessed with the idea of creating harmonious systems within unique environments;

that are tied together,

create and reuse energy,

are low impact,

and are built to sustainably last into the long term.

The Permaculture-UX Connection

Permaculture design principles emphasize energy reuse within a system to eliminate waste. In UX, this translates to creating efficient user journeys that maximize value while minimizing effort.

Just as permaculture home design uses zones of convenience, placing frequently used items closer to the house, you should organize your website based on user needs and frequency of access.

Readers expect to see the most important things front and center. The journeys you want them to take should take few clicks as possible. The ease of moving around your website is just like moving around a property. This feels obvious, yeah?

Reducing Friction in UX is More Than Reducing Clicks – It’s About A Fully Connected Ecosystem

The main goal is to reduce the number of steps (or "clicks") it takes to reach the desired outcome. While at the same time, tying systems together so that as little content as possible is wasted, and byproducts are all used in different ways.

In permaculture, this might mean installing automatic lights to save clicks throughout the day but also working on rearranging garden zones and moving water drainages to soak into the yard instead of running off into the street.

From my driveway to inside the mudroom there are 3 automatic lights that come on and turn off after 5 minutes. Throughout the day of exiting and reentering the home maybe 5 times, I save (2 clicks x 3 switches) x 5 = 30 clicks per day per person, just on lights.

Now expand that out to everything else you do everyday: Where is your vacuum in the home? Is your heat on a timer that matches your work schedule?

On websites, it's about streamlining navigation and presenting crucial information upfront, while also connecting pieces of the flywheel to so that it’s more than just your website – email, social, and community building is all tied together, reusing energy (content) throughout the system.

Your Homepage is the House and Everything Around it are Zones

1. Zone 1 (Homepage): Essential information and most frequent actions

2. Zone 2 (Main navigation): Most important and popular pages

3. Zone 3 (Category pages): Significant content that opens a door to a semantic batch of content and lower levels of the funnel.

4. Zone 4 (Articles): Daily distributed content

5. Zone 5 (Deep content): Rarely accessed content that may need significant landscaping every once in a while.

From Bill Mollison’s Permaculture Design Manual

Try It By Using It As a Filter First

1. Observe and interact: Analyze user behavior to inform design decisions. Apply self-regulation principles to understand what types of projects and goals throw the whole system off.

2. Catch, store, and reuse energy: User data, feedback, user generated questions, testimonials, and any other product of the machine should be stored and reused in new ways.

3. Obtain a yield and commit to more efficient practices: Ensure each page provides value to both users and business goals, and also hits a streamlined brief.

4. Ask yourself: Does this new project USE a byproduct we already have, or does it CREATE a byproduct that can be used somewhere else? Often this can be streamlined down to one question… “How does this project do triple duty?”

Two Things Permaculture Loves: Mulch and Swales

Build swales:

Swales are shallow pits dug into hillsides that are reinforced with trees so that when it rains, water is captured in the ditch and soaks into the hillside instead of running off.

Swales are like the treasure pits of your website: The content that generates email signups, the webinars that result in social shares and email signups, the youtube channel that automatically creates videos from content.

When you think of “ways to get more assets”, think of where you can build swales.

Cover everything in mulch:

Mulch in permaculture is a solution for almost everything. In the desert, it can start a topsoil creation process by cooling the surface, slowing evaporation of water, adding carbon matter, adding organic matter, and preventing erosion. In the tropics, deep mulch can give water a place to filter and soak, instead of sitting on the surface. Basically mulch solves everything.

What’s the mulch of your website? To me, it’s the stuff that cools everything down and gives it a little life and covering. This is brand voice and tone, design elements, strong, consistent messaging, and high EAT. All of these measures protect your website against exposure to the elements.

Swales From Bill Mollison’s Permaculture Design Manual

Just as a well-designed permaculture system thrives with minimal intervention, a thoughtfully designed website can increase entropy in its own system through its inherent user-centricity and efficiency.