SES London: Successful Site Architecture

Speakers: Danny Sullivan (searchenginewatch.com), Shari Thurow (grantasticdesigns.com) and Alan Perkins (SilverDisc)

Alan Perkins is first and starts by stressing that site architecture is fundamentally important to achieve good organic rankings because it is the skeleton that everything else is built on. He goes on to explain the difference between information architecture and technical architecture.

Technical Architecture
Technical Architecture covers hardware (servers, routers, networks, caches etc) and software (protocols, programs, databases) used for serving web content as applied to web search services, your web site and pages on your web site.

Google’s Big Daddy architecture changes addressed canonicalisation and normalisation.

Canonicalisation
Occurs when several different URLs are treated as the same URL, in this case one URL is picked to represent the rest. This most often happens with duplicate content (same content available at different URLs, a common problem with dynamic web sites) and redirects.

Normalisation
Normalisation determines the standard form of a set of identical URLs, e.g. absolute or relative URLs (as opposed to canonicalisation that occurs with different URLs). Search engines normalise URLs before queuing them for indexing.

Technical architecture of your web site presents several problem areas: dynamic URLs, URLs with session IDs, cookies, authentication and client side interaction (e.g. Flash or javascript).

Information Architecture
Information Architecture covers the web site’s content, organisation, navigation, labelling (read: anchor text) and search as applied to the web as a whole, web search services, your web site and pages on your web site.

The information architecture of the web as a whole is subject of much study (especially by the search engines) and roughly divides into the Core, in (web sites linking to the Core but not linked to by the Core), out (web sites that are linked to by the Core but that don’t link to the Core). Our aim as SEOs is to position our web sites in the Core. The only way to be there is to have outbound links on your web sites, as well as inbound links.

Information architecture of search services divides between platform (pc, mobile etc.), language, location and vertical/theme. You need to match your technical and information architecture to the search services in which you want to be featured in order to have optimisation success. This means for example that for location considerations, it is best to have a local domain name if you wish to rank high on for example google.fr.

When it comes to the information architecture of your web site, keyword research is critical in order to match your site’s mission to the searchers’ missions. The skeleton of your site comprises organisation, navigation and labelling. The best skeleton is hierarchical and it is crucial to build for breadcrumb trails (this is where you should concentrate your keywords).

Always use your main keyword to link to the home page instead of just the word “home”. You should link to items on your home page if you think they are of interest to most visitors and you should bury items more deeply if they are more of niche interest. Your site is a giant filter mechanism where the further away from the home page people travel the more likely they are to purchase, but the less likely it is that the page they are on is of general interest.

Shari Thurow also has an interesting presentation on the subject. She stresses the difference between site architecture (how you group information) and interface (reflection of the site architecture). The interface consists of cross-linking, site map, page layout and URL structure. She too stresses the importance of breadcrumbs. Moreover, she emphasizes that the navigation scheme of a web site should indeed support the site’s information architecture.

When it comes to site navigation schemes, she names from best to worse: text links, navigation buttons, image maps, menus, flash links. She also stresses the importance of both vertical (through breadcrumbs and a category > subcategory > sub sub category > product style) and horizontal internal linking. From a usability stand point, the message is that people must have a sense of place (where they are on the web site) in order to purchase.

The only “problem” with vertical linking is the emphasis on the home page, which in itself is not a problem but if you are selling something online, your category and product pages are more important. This problem is solved by horizontal cross-linking. The sums up several ways to establish this:

Embedded text links: not only great for search engines because of the anchor text and the text surrounding the link, but also because it stands out as a CTA (call to action).
Related links: usability studies show that page views per visitor increase by 40% by cross-linking for the perspective of your target audience.
Alphabetical links
Alternative links: important for e-commerce sites because the product pages must have importance.

It is important to have a site map that has an introductory paragraph and links to the most important pages on your site with a descriptive summary.

In your page layout, make sure that the most important information is above the fold (i.e. without scrolling).

All sites should have a custom 404, an About Us page and a robots.txt (even if empty).

Technorati tags: ses - search engine strategies - search - site architecture