Lesson 4 in the Simple Tiger SEO Training Course
What good is a site to a spider if the spider can’t read it?
There are literally billions of sites indexed by search engines and every site has to be readable by the spiders in order for the search engines to index them. Optimizing your website’s structure guarantees that when a spider gets to your site, it will be able to read all the way through and index every page.
There are several different factors involved with site structure, but the main factors are:
- File and folder names and structure
- Site wide navigation
- Entry or landing pages
- Layout
File and folder names and structure - Big and small sites differ in the way they should be optimized for site structure. Big sites between 100-200 pages should have all of the files located in the root directory. If a spider has to read several pages, it doesn’t want to change directories several times, so usually it will just leave. For smaller sites, place all of your files in separate directories under the root directory. When writing a page like a contact us page, make it an index.htm, index.html, or index.php page and place it in a folder on your server called “contact-simple-tiger” for example. This way when a spider reads it it only reads “contact simple tiger”. That makes a lot more sense and tends to be more relevant to what you are trying to achieve instead of “contactus.html” which a spider will literally read as “contactus”.
Site wide navigation - The best form of site navigation is text links on the top of every single page in your site. A step down from text link navigation is image or button navigation. Buttons and images are very difficult for spiders to read and don’t place as much weight on the keywords and consistency of your navigation as text link navigation. The next step down is one of the worst types of navigation; dynamic, JavaScript, or drop down navigation menus. Only a few spiders can read these, so it is best to not use them. Low and behold the worst type of navigation is no navigation. You need a bar across the top of your site or up the left hand side of your site for a spider to read. It is best to have navigation read first, headline second, content third, images fourth, and last but not least a footer version of the same navigation you had at the beginning. This will allow the spiders to move on to the other pages of your site.
Entry or landing pages - These are the first pages a searcher finds when searching for the terms that are relevant to your site. These pages should be designated as landing pages for certain keyword terms you have decided to use. A good entry page will have a strong explanation of your business, what you do, what you have to offer, and what the searcher is looking for.
Layout - The layout of your site should make sense to the reader. Do not ever sacrifice reader/visitor experience for search engine readability. A good content management system like WordPress will operate perfectly in both worlds. I highly recommend you use the WordPress system like I have for Simple Tiger if you wish to build a blogging system that caters to both the reader and the search engines without compromise.
Another factor involved in site structure and organization is domain names. Spiders tend to read a lot differently than humans, for instance a spider would see www.atlantaseofirm.com and read it as “atlantaseofirm”. Unless someone searches for “atlantaseofirm” they will not find the site. If a spider sees www.atlanta-seo-firm.com, it will read as “atlanta seo firm” which is much more human appropriate, however you don’t want to go around telling people “to go to atlanta dash seo dash firm dot com”. This is why it is nice to use simple method called a redirect. Set up your site on a domain name like www.atlanta-seo-firm.com that a spider can read, then also buy the domain name atlantaseofirm.com so the people you tell it to don’t have to type in the dashes. After you setup this domain name, have it redirected to atlanta-seo-firm.com and the user will never notice the difference.
Tip: Keep in mind, domain names are a small factor compared to inbound links, content, titles, file structure, keyword efficiency, and focus on target niche and terms. For this reason, I don’t recommend telling an SEO client to go out and purchase www.free-home-mortgage-quote-atlanta-georgia.com because it is just a waste of time, work, and looks bad. If you can’t find a good domain name in the niche, do without. Sites like eBay make it huge with a name that simply has no meaning other than their own brand recognition. eBay literally translates into nothing in English, but now to you and I it means “cheap priced products I want and need and a great way to sell my junk and make money”.
The next lesson “Website Submission - Let ‘em know what you’ve done” explains how to promote your website to all of these major search engines.
If you like what you’ve read and wish to read the entire course for free, subscribe to our RSS feed through an RSS reader or via email.
December 14th, 2007 at 2:58 am
[...] Site Structure - Become A File Architect and Search Engines Will Love You [...]