Site Architecture That Helps Search Engines Find You
Here are some tips to help you create a good site architecture and navigation scheme. These tips, when used with keyword and link best practices, will help search engines find the content on your web pages.
Navigation
- Be consistent and consolidate information wherever possible. "Help," "FAQ," and "Instructions" can be all put into one page or one category that makes it easy for users to find that type of information. Break information up inside the category if you need to. In addition, saying "Instructions for filling out such and such form," uses the keywords of what the page is about, helping search engines find the page.
- Use breadcrumb trails. This type of navigation literally creates a trail that users can follow back to where they came from. For example: Home > Category 1> Bucket A > Bucket B > Bucket C. Breadcrumbs are used in conjunction with regular navigation. They don't replace it. They're nearly always text links, in a smaller font. Large sites should have top-of-the-page navigation pointing to the top-level pages and category navigation on the left with breadcrumb navigation on the page itself. Footer navigation should be placed at the bottom of the page.
- The footer of web pages is also important. It's important to give your users a quick way to the home page or key pages. The footer is a good place to put text-only links that are redundant to the top-level navigation, so your user doesn't have to scroll back up to the top of the page. Supplying this added convenience also allows another chance for you to use those important keywords, and helps users who have their graphics turned off.
- Use keyword phrases within your main content links. These links may go to the exact same place as top-level navigation links but they're labeled with keywords related to the same topic. For example, a top-level navigation link may be labeled "Local Weather Forecasts," while a text link lower down on the page from inside a paragraph (pointing to the same page) might say "Weather for your Zip Code." Since users and search engines use both terms heavily, you're covering your bases by taking this extra measure.
- Always use a sitemap. Search engines love to have a site map through which they can quickly and easily access your site's pages for indexing. When creating a site map for your websites, be sure to put it at the root level (not within any subfolders or directories), link to it from your home page, and name it site_map.html (or .htm, whichever extension you are using for your site). A table of contents is also helpful in some cases.
Simply create a list of links (similar to an outline format) that shows how the pages of your site are linked to from each upper tier page, and name these links using keyword-rich, but relevant, text links. Add a small paragraph about your organization, or about the subject matter of the page, at the top of the page. Keep the site map page simple, using no graphics (or very few if necessary, perhaps your organization's logo). Be sure to link to your site map or table of contents near the top of the homepage as it will be picked up by crawlers. And when submitting your site's pages to the major engines, be sure to submit the site map page as well as your home page.
File and Directory Structure
- Directory structure. Most search engines don't recognize anything beyond two directory levels. They'll index 40 to 50 files in those directories and do it alphabetically. It's crucial for you to place your most important pages at the first or second directory level, breaking it up into 50 files per directory. Be sure to name your files and directories with your keywords. Don't underscore to separate keywords. Instead, use hyphens. Don't stuff too many keywords in your file or directory names. Make them keyword rich but not too long. Name image files after keywords, which is particularly important now that many search engines have image searches. Name your PDF files after your keywords as well.
- Entry pages. Pages that bring you traffic are entry pages, and each should be optimized and submitted to directories and search engines. Make the pages stand-alone, like your home page. When a visitor lands on one of your entry pages, the visitor needs to know where they are, who your organization is, and what the page is about. Include full navigation on all entry pages and make it obvious what the page and site is about. Don't assume visitors will find the index page first.
- Robots.txt file. Search engine robots will check a special plain text file in the root of each server called robots.txt before indexing a site. Robots.txt implements the Robots Exclusion Protocol, which allows the website administrator to define what parts of the site are off-limits to specific robot user agent names. Web administrators can disallow access to the Common Gateway Interface (CGI), private and temporary directories, for example, because they do not want pages in those areas indexed . Learn more about search engine indexing and robots.txt files.
Coding for Search Engines
- The Title tag is key. Each page must have its own descriptive Title tag that matches the topic of the page exactly. This text appears whenever someone bookmarks the page, and it provides important information for the search engines. Remember that Meta keyword tags are nearly useless these days but are known to be somewhat helpful when the content of the page strongly supports those keywords. Be selective with what you put in that tag. Don't waste time calculating density and meeting Meta keyword character specifications. Just focus on backing up the actual content on the page, or using synonyms and misspellings.
- Put most important things up top. One of the easiest ways to satisfy search engines and users is to quickly get to the point of a page by designing it like a pyramid. Put the most important information at the very top of the page, in text or text links that go to top-level pages. Content should be placed so that the most important, useful information is at or near the top of the page. The least important information and links should be lower on the page.
- Place Cascading Style Sheets and JavaScript into separate files rather than having the script on the page. Otherwise, it could interfere with the crawlers' ability to quickly find keywords within your content. Watch out for JavaScript that is used for navigation menus that special-needs users can never see and search engines cannot follow.
- WYSIWYG editors. Be extra careful with "What You See Is What You Get" (WYSIWYG) HTML editors. The generic code they create will often not meet the needs of all users or search engines.
- Place keywords in your "image alt tag" text and "link title" text. For example: <a href="seo.html" title="Learn more about Search Engine Marketing and Promotion" ɚ Search Engine Optimization </a>.
Resources
- Successful Site Architecture
http://tools.devshed.com/c/a/Web-Development/Successful-Site-Architecture
Page Updated or Reviewed: March 13, 2007
