Website Structuring.pdf

Module 5 - SEO Training Kit

Website structuring

Prepared by John Romaine

seotrainingkit.com

1. VIDEO TRANSCRIPT

Getting Started

By now you should have a good understanding of how search engines work, domain names, keyword

research and the basic fundamentals of seo.

From here, weÓll look at how you can implement what youÓve learnt so far, and begin applying that

towards actual website development and design.

In this module IÓll be covering a number of various aspects that entail site design, including information

architecture, usability, content creation and so forth. However before doing so, we need to first

understand why site structure and design is important for natural SEO.

Why site structure matters.

If you consider keyword research the blue print or plan for your website, then the actual design and

development would be the construction of that plan. In essence, keyword research is the plan, and the

website is the building itself.

With good keyword research in place, youÓre now positioning yourself with every opportunity to ensure

that your site is highly optimized to capture good targeted traffic. This in turn will will bring with it, longer

visitor engagement times, increased referrals, more leads and of course better conversion rates. In

addition to this, the search engines will recognise well organised content and will reward you for your

efforts with better rankings.

Unfortunately however, for a large majority of websites, this isnÓt the case. For whatever reasons, many

site owners find themselves asking why on earth their sites arenÓt performing in the search engines after

having invested tens of thousands of dollars towards web design.

Speaking from experience, quite a lot of web designers lack a real understanding of search engine

optimisation. Often designers will sell you on flashy graphics, multimedia rich content, web 2.0 stuff, and

confuse you with technical jargon like php, vbscript or mysql. Be cautious when working with web

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developers in particular. TheyÓll often sell you something that looks fantastic, but performs horribly in the

search engines.

Ideally, your seo consultant should be guiding your designer in terms of site design and structure. If

done this way, a site will rank well and the money will follow. Alternatively, you might find yourself with a

slick looking site thatÓs gathering dust.

Search engine friendly design

What is search engine friendly design?

Many seo professionals have different interpretations of the term search-engine friendly web design. To

some, it means crawlability - making sure that web content is accessible to the commercial web search

engines. Other SEO professionals believe that search-engine friendly design is indexation - making sure

web pages are included in a search engine index.

Truth is, search engine friendly design are all of these things, and more. I believe that a search engine

friendly site, in its true definition, is one that not only accommodates search engines but also one that

engages visitors once onsite. ThereÓs no point in having a website rank well in the search engines if its

designed for search algorithms only. Chances are, your content will read artificially, and the user

experience will be compromised because of it.

So in summary, a search engine friendly website is one that conforms to search engine guidelines, is

easily crawlable, and indexable Î and also engages readers.

Static vs Dynamic Î which is better?

There has been an ongoing debate for at least a decade or more about which type of sites perform

better in the search engines Î static websites or dynamic websites.

Firstly, what are the differences?

Static websites

Static websites are generally made up of regular html pages. As an example, hereÓs the url of a static

site.

www.somewebsite.com/articles/red-widgets.html

As you can see, the page extension simply ends in .html. Pages like this consist of static content, that

cant be updated on the go, unless of course you get a web developer to update it for you. Often static

pages go lengthy periods of time before being updated or changed. In a way, content is considered

ÐfixedÑ.

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Dynamic websites

Dynamic websites however consist of ever changing content, that is usually updated via whatÓs known

as a content management system. Unlike static sites the urls change along with that content and carry

what are called Òquerystring valuesÓ. You may have seen these on various websites youÓve visited on the

internet.

Heres a quick example.

www.somewebsite.com/articles/red-widgets.php?id=239&category=24&cl=darkred

Obviously, much different to that of a static site. The debate over which performs better in the search

engines dates back quite some time, to the days when search engines had a difficult time indexing sites

with dynamic urls. Often search engines would simply strip off the querystring values and simply index

the base pages, which in this case would leave you with

www.somewebsite.com/articles/red-widgets.php

This might not seem like a big deal at first, but if you have a thousand different variations of content, all

using that same page, then the issue is that instead of having thousands of pages indexed, you have

one. This then reduces your entry points and coverage on the web significantly.

However, this has all changed. As search engines become smarter, they are now capable of correctly

indexing each page seperately along with the query string values and ranking them accordingly. There

are some other elements that assist with this process, including the cananonical tag, which IÓll be

covering later in this module.

But for now, the answer is - both dynamic and static sites perform equally well in the search engines.

The question is, whatÓs better suited to your needs?

Good design practices

Without delving too deep into the semantics of web design, IÓd like to touch on two areas that I believe

should be emphasised within this module. They are

Server side includes

CSS

What are server side includes?

Server side includes are global files that are used to standardize key sections of a website. These

sections are often the header, sidemenus and footers. Server side includes are beneficial as they allow

you to update a single file, and that change is then reflected across the entire website. Using this

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practice provides better effeciency and overall management in that your site will be much more

organised.

From an seo stand point, server side includes allow you to leverage onsite navigation much more

efficiently and standardise your sites layout.

What is CSS?

CSS stands for cascading style sheets, and is a coding language used to describe the presentation

semantics, most noticeably the formatting, of a document written in a markup language. CSS is

commonly recognised for its contributions to building fast-loading, standards-compliant, easily modifiable

web pages. In addition to these capabilities, CSS can provide some initial SEO/SEM benefits.

These include:

Reducing code overheads. By this, Im referring to the code to content ratio. A website that is

written in efficient, light weight css will not only load quicker, but will be much easier for the

search engines to crawl and index.

Standardizing your meta tag structure Î as in H1 etc. This makes these links easily discoverable

by search engines, helping ensure more efficient and deeper crawling of your site.

In addition to this direct impact, CSS can also provide these benefits in your ongoing search engine

optimisation and search engine marketing efforts:

Some examples of this are ;

Split testing. By separating content and presentation, you can very easily experiment with

different copy and presentation (for example font, background color, etc.) and test what converts

best.

Less time spent maintaining web sites frees up webmaster resources, helping you to implement

more and fresher content, and more SEO/SEM strategies

Lets now look at actual site structure, and how it can directly impact your seo and marketing efforts.

Site architecture

What is site architecture?

Website architecture is an approach to the design and planning of websites which, like architecture itself,

involves technical, aesthetic and functional criteria. These elements combined give us our desired end

result, which is ideally a website that is well organised, easy to navigate and is viewed favourably by the

search engines.

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Site architecture is not to be confused with web design as such, but moreso the organisational element

of design, which includes ;

Directory structure

Information architecture

Site navigation

Usability and experience

Load times

Lets look a bit closer at these elements of site architecture in more detail.

Directory structure

The way in which your website is structured is essential for good seo and search placement rankings.

Put simply, your sites file and folder structure is reflected directly within your websites url. This revisits

the importance of why good keyword research is vital.

By using highly relevant naming conventions within your sites files and folders, you immediately begin

leveraging previously performed keyword research to its best advantage. This then means that your sites

directory structure is following a specific, contextually relevant environment. This has a strong tendency

to increase rankings when used in combination with other seo tactics.

Let me give you an example.

A typical directory structure would consist of the following layout.

Root pages, such as your home page, about us, contact us, and perhaps a frequently asked

questions. Pages like this usually live directly off the root and normally follow your domain name.

Here are a few examples.

www.yourdomain.com/index.html (home page)

www.yourdomain.com/contactus.html

www.yourdomain.com/aboutus.html

However for all internal content such as, products, multimedia, documents, downloads, articles

and so forth, are usually designated to their own directories or subfolders which typically look like

this with the sites url.

For articles you might have

www.yourdomain.com/articles/myarticles.html

For videos you might have

www.yourdomain.com/videos/myvideos.html

And for downloads you might have something like this È

www.yourdomain.com/downloads/mydownloads.html

As you can see, each directory, or folder contains information or content that is relevant specifically to

that particular section of the website. In essence this directory structure would be similar to the

categories of which you would find in a regular magazine or book. This is advantageous as it allows for -

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