Website Information Architecture_SEO Notes 3

Preface

Whether the website has been built or not, when starting an SEO project, you should study the website architecture from an SEO perspective. Specifically, it can be divided into technical decisions and structural decisions.

I. Technical Decisions

Technical choices have an important impact on SEO results. Several key influencing factors are as follows:

1. Dynamic URLs

Dynamic URLs refer to URLs like "www.xxx.com/xx/x.html?a=1&b=2&c=3&d=...", that is, URLs with many query parameters. It is said that spiders will not crawl pages with more than 3 parameters.

In addition, there are static and pseudo-static URLs. Static means that each page has a corresponding HTML physical file. Pseudo-static refers to URLs like the blog posts on this site, which appear to have physical files but actually don't. Both static and pseudo-static URLs have semantic advantages (for example, Baidu search keywords will match keywords contained in the URL), but static pages have faster access speeds.

So it's essential to ensure that the CMS system doesn't concatenate many complex parameters in the URL.

2. Session ID or User ID in URLs

CMS systems usually add a tracking code at the end of the URL to track user visits to the website. Search engines will treat different URLs as different pages, forming "duplicate content" and internal competition. Ensure that the CMS does not use Session IDs.

3. Redundant Symbols in URLs

URLs should be as concise as possible without redundant symbols. Redundant symbols in URLs can affect user experience and may also affect SEO.

4. Links or Content Based on JavaScript, Java, or Flash

Search engines may not see links and content implemented with these technologies (currently, search engine technology may already be able to read some information from content implemented with these technologies, but compared to ordinary HTML content, the weight may be very small). Therefore, ensure that links and content are in the simplest HTML code form.

5. Content Behind Forms (Drop-down Menus)

Content can only be accessed by submitting a form, or content can only be accessed by selecting from a drop-down menu. Search engines may not see (or may not want to see, because it may be deceptive content) these hidden contents. Therefore, do not easily use these technologies unless you want to hide content.

6. Temporary Redirects (302)

Permanent redirects are 301. Ensure that the CMS's default redirect is 301 (or can be easily set to 302), because only 301 can transfer (part of?) the weight of the original page. 302 has no significance for SEO.

II. Structural Decisions

One of the most basic decisions when building a website is determining the content linking and navigation structure. Which pages should the homepage link to? Which pages should be used as top-level categories and then link to other related pages? Are related pages linked together?

Website link structure decisions involve many aspects and also greatly affect usability. Users will rely on internal links to browse the entire site. For search engines, the navigation structure can help spiders determine which pages are the most important on the website and can also be used to analyze the relevance of pages to specific topics.

Several key factors to consider before website development or redesign are as follows:

1. Target Keywords

Keyword research is an important part of SEO. What keywords do people use when searching for similar products or services? How can these words match the hierarchical structure of the website? The final page logic structure should be the same as the way users think about products and services. Amazon does this very well, with detailed categorization, category information contained in URLs, and the characteristic that product names are very early in the URL (the earlier, the higher the importance).

2. Cross-linking of Related Content

It's useful to link related articles to each other, which can help search engines confirm the relevance of pages to specific topics. For example, e-commerce websites often have "recommended purchases", "users who bought this product also bought XXX", etc., all of which are cross-links.

Such cross-link bars can be dynamically generated, such as "smart recommendations", "related reading", etc.

3. Using Anchor Text

Anchor text is called the gold mine of internal links. You need to plan how to use keyword-containing anchor text in internal links from the beginning of SEO. Avoid using non-semantic text like "view more" or "click here". Also ensure that technical and creative teams can understand this point, and even prepare a set of anchor text strategies.

4. Using Breadcrumb Navigation

Breadcrumb navigation is used to tell users their current level. The anchor text in breadcrumb navigation (navigation menus) can contain search keywords, which is good for both user experience and SEO.

5. Reducing Link Depth

Both search engines and users will judge the importance of pages from the website hierarchy. The key factor is how many clicks from the homepage it takes to reach the page. Pages that are only one click away from the homepage are the most important. If it takes 5 clicks, there will be little influence, and search engines may not even crawl very deep pages (the number of crawling layers depends on website trust, for example, only the homepage is indexed in the early stages of building a website, and later second-level pages are gradually indexed).

SEO recommendation is to make the website structure as flat as possible, reducing the number of clicks from the homepage to all important content. However, don't be too extreme. Too many links on a page is also not good for SEO (it is recommended that internal links should not exceed 100). Therefore, you need to plan a website structure that is as flat as possible (if necessary, also consider scalability, whether the strategy can adapt to the site becoming large), while ensuring that user experience is not affected.

References

• "The Art of SEO"