I recently wrote a post pointing to 50 great bloggers for hire. While I did wind up numbering those bloggers, the numbers didn’t mean anything. I didn’t alphabetize them either — no one is going to pick Ann over Xavier for their blog just because of their placement on a list. Instead, they’ll pick whichever blogger is tagged with the topic of their blog — fashion, finance, etc.

The fact is that alphabetizing just doesn’t matter online. Some monk picked it out of a whole stack of different organizing methods a thousand years ago because there wasn’t a way to handle information without some sort of indexing method. Alphabetizing just wound up being one of the easiest options — it worked across all the languages that used Roman letters and it could be taught in a matter of minutes.

But organizing information isn’t an issue today. Search tools are so incredibly powerful that you can find information on any subject within a matter of seconds. You don’t need to consult an index, a card catalog or an encyclopedia.

Why Alphabetize Web Content?

No matter what information you’re trying to provide to readers, it simply doesn’t make sense to alphabetize it. That’s just not how readers will find information these days. It’s an incredibly time consuming process for most projects, and it’s tedious.

So, don’t bother.

If a client wants you to alphabetize information on a project, it’s up to you to educate him or her on options. Tagging is probably the best, along with a solid helping of SEO. Most readers are either going to search for a subject or look for content with a particular tag on their favorite site. No one is about to browse through alphabetical listings in hopes that you might have some relevant information.

Photo Credit: Leo Reynolds