Site Architecture and Search

Clear site architecture, when paired with best practices for keywords and links, will help search engines and customers find your content.

Navigation

Be Consistent and Consolidate

"Help," "FAQ," and "Instructions" are related and can all be grouped together. Break information up inside the category if needed

Include Keywords

Use "Instructions for Form XYZ" instead of just "Instructions"

Use Breadcrumbs

Breadcrumbs provide a "trail" to help people find their way through your site, and are used in conjunction with regular navigation. 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

• Example:  Home » Category 1> Bucket A » Bucket B » Bucket C

Use Footer Navigation

Footer navigation should be placed at the bottom of the page. Include text-only links that are redundant to the top-level navigation, so customers don't have to scroll back up to the top of the page to navigate. Allows you to enforce important keywords, and helps users who have graphics turned off in their browser

Use Keyword Phrases in Content Links

These links may go to the same place as top-level navigation, but they're labeled with related keywords

• Example: Use a top-level navigation link labeled "Local Weather Forecasts," and a text link lower down on the page (pointing to the same page) labeled "Weather for your Zip Code." Since users and search engines use both terms heavily, you increase the likelihood one of those phrases will place your page high in search results

Always Use a Sitemap 

Search engines love a sitemap (or a table of contents) to quickly and easily access your site's pages for indexing. Create your site map at the root level (not within any subfolders or directories), link to it from your home page, and name it "site-map. Create a list of links (in outline format) showing how the pages of your site are linked. Start from each upper tier page, and name links using keyword-rich, relevant links. Add a small paragraph about your organization, or about the subject matter of the page, at the top of the page. Keep it simple - no graphics. Link to your site map or table of contents near the top of the homepage. When submitting your site to search engines, include site map page and home page

File and Directory Structure

Directory Structure

Most search engines only recognize two directory levels. They'll alphabetically index only 40 to 50 files in those top directories. It's crucial to place your most important pages at the first or second directory level, with no more than 50 files per directory. Name files and directories with keywords. Use hyphens, not underscore, to separate keywords. Make file and directory names keyword-rich but not too long. Name image files and attachments with keywords

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

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 site 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), or private and temporary directories, if they do not want pages in those areas indexed . Learn more about search engine indexing and robots.txt files.

Coding for Search Engines

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 the Most Important Things at 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.

CSS/Java Placement

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" — Search Engine Optimization </a>.

Resources

• Successful Site Architecture