SEOgadget.co.uk

SUCCESSFUL INFORMATION

ARCHITECTURE A4Uexpo London 2010

Richard Baxter – SEOgadget.co.uk

SEOgadget.co.uk

INFORMATION ARCHITECTURE

Photo by: Gregg Knapp

SEOgadget.co.uk

NOT SO GOOD SITE ARCHITECTURE

Very weak pages at the bottom of the architecture 6 clicks to deepest level

Low search engine visibility

Page Rank

1/10

1/100

1/1000

1/10000

1/100000

Homepage

SEOgadget.co.uk

FLATTENED SITE ARCHITECTURE

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No more than 3 clicks to deepest level Stronger pages at the lowest tier

SEOgadget.co.uk

TIPS TO IMPROVE SITE INDEXATION

Page Rank

Identify linked-to pages in the architecture and cross link to pages nearby

External Links

SEOgadget.co.uk

Quality Price Branding Product Departing Destination Chronology

KEYWORD RESEARCH IN SITE ARCHITECTURE

• The power of keyword categories and sub-types

“Compare cheap EasyJet flights from London to New York in June”

• Group together search terms where each sub-category generates unique constructions:

“Flights to Malaga in June”

“Cheap Ryan air Flights to Malaga”

SEOgadget.co.uk

MAPPING KEYWORDS TO CONTENT TYPES

Homepage

•www.domain.com

Continents

•www.domain.com/Europe

Countries

•www.domain.com/Spain

Cities

•www.domain.com/Malaga

Resorts

•www.domain.com/Las-Palmas

Islands

•www.domain.com/Gran-Canaria

Routes

•www.domain.com/Gatwick/Malaga

Generic • “Cheap flights”

• “Flights”

Destination

• “Flights to #”

• “Cheap flights to #”

Route

• “Flights from @ to #”

• “Cheap flights from @ to #”

• “@ to #”

• “@ to # Flights”

SEOgadget.co.uk

SITE ARCHITECTURE DESIGN

SEOgadget.co.uk

GLOBAL NAVIGATION

• Use CSS styled DHTML – “cross-browser drop-down cascading validating menu”

• Position close to the top of the page

• Visible with CSS / JavaScript disabled in Web Developer Toolbar

SEOgadget.co.uk

TIPS TO IMPROVE SITE INDEXATION

Authority pages pass value to pages in their

hierarchy only

Linked to pages transfer value UP and Down but not ACROSS

SEOgadget.co.uk

TIPS TO IMPROVE SITE INDEXATION

Identify linked-to pages in the architecture and cross link to pages nearby

Cross link to enhance and

strengthen pages across as well as

down

SEOgadget.co.uk

CROSS LINKS

SEOgadget.co.uk

CREATE A CROSS LINKING TAXONOMY

SEOgadget.co.uk

MAKE YOUR CONTENT MORE UNIQUE WITH UGC

Duplicate (900+ copies)

Unique (Yay)

SEOgadget.co.uk

SUPERCHARGED UGC

<div class="hreview-aggregate">

<span class="item"> <span class="fn">20Q Version 2</span>

</span>

<span class="rating">Rating: <span class="average">5.0</span>

out of <span class="best">5</span>

based on <span class="count">3</span> reviews.

</span>

</div>

Data Feed and Micro Format

Optimisation in Google

09:30–10:30 Room 2-4

SEOgadget.co.uk

5 UGC REVIEWS TIPS

1) Pull through review content and aggregate ratings to your category and home pages

2) If you have pages that expire (vouchers, products, offers) – keep the UGC for a rainy day

3) Limit the number of reviews that appear on a page and cherry pick the newest / oldest to display on your category pages

4) Make it really easy for users to give feedback

5) Use Microformats to mark-up your ratings and tell Google

6) Reward the top contributors (points, special discounts etc)

SEOgadget.co.uk

OTHER USERS FOUND THIS DOCUMENT FOR

• Adds uniqueness to the page

• Internal site search data can be used to cross link

SEOgadget.co.uk

BOILERPLATE COPY & UGC – CASE STUDY

1) Reworked the top 100 category pages to use unique content not boiler plates

2) Made UGC index able (previously hidden in JavaScript)

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SEOgadget.co.uk

TECHNICAL ARCHITECTURE

Photo by: Tiago Cassol Schvarstzhaupt

SEOgadget.co.uk

DETECT DUPLICATE CONTENT

http://www.seomoz.org/

SEOgadget.co.uk

RULES FOR DUPLICATE CONTENT

Issue Example URL Action

Paginated and view links /page.html?page=10&view=50&sort= noindex, follow all non-root queries eg: ?page=2. Make sure your paging navigation doesn't create a ?page=1 link if you can avoid it

Print friendly links /page.html?printerfriendly=yes Use print friendly CSS or rel="canonical" the original article URL. Don't block in robots.txt

Analytics tracking URLS /page.html?utm_source=a4uexpo&utm_medium=architecture-session&utm_campaign=dupe-content

rel="canonical" the original URL and / or use hash tags in tracking code. Yoast's analytics for WP plugin supports hastags: http://bit.ly/9H0o43

Sessions in URL /page.html?sessionID=56193246156354&language=en&mode=line

Remove session id's, move to cookie based session tracking, don't issue the session id with user agent detection, use parameter handling in WMT

Inconsistent case in URLs /page.html vs /Page.html Check all internal links, implement a lower case redirect, rel="canonical"

Subdomain canonicalisation http://www.domain.co.uk vs http://domain.co.uk Implement a 301 www redirect and set preferences in WMT

Trailing slashes missing /voucher-codes/dixons vs /voucher-codes/dixons/

Include or remove trailing slashes using a 301 - use most linked to URLs as a guide and link internally as consistently as possible. Use rel="canonical"

Content syndication

Make sure you have a link back to the "original article" as a bare miniumum. Syndication on your own network you could use a cross domain canonical

SEOgadget.co.uk

A HEALTHY WEBSITE IS A HAPPY WEBSITE

http://seogadget.co.uk/how-to-install-and-use-iis-seo-toolkit/

SEOgadget.co.uk

SPEED UP YOUR WEBSITE

• Site speed is important for engagement metrics – 47% expect a web page to load in two seconds or less

– 40% will abandon a web page if it takes more than three seconds to load

– 52% of online shoppers claim that quick page loads are important for their loyalty to a site

– 14% will start shopping at a different site if page loads are slow

– 23% will stop shopping or even walk away from their computer

– 64% of shoppers who are dissatisfied with their site visit will go somewhere else to shop next time

• http://bit.ly/Jc7M6 [Pingdom]

• http://seogadget.co.uk/improving-site-speed-talk-about-the-business-benefit/

SEOgadget.co.uk

FASTER RECRAWL WITH CONDITIONAL GET

• Conditional get request answered with a 304 not modified response

Last time I crawled this page

was the 10th October…

http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2008/11/date-with-googlebot-part-ii-http-status.html

http://sebastians-pamphlets.com/dynamic-pages-can-support-if-modified-since-too/

SEOgadget.co.uk

FASTER INDEXING AND DISCOVERY

Channel Services Aggregators

XML

Sitemap http://www.bing.com/webmaster/ping.aspx?siteMap=[sitemap url]

http://www.google.com/ping?sitemap=[sitemap url]

SEOgadget.co.uk

THANK YOU!

richard@seogadget.co.uk

@richardbaxter