I'd like to take a look at an area often overlooked in SEO.

Site architecture.

Site architecture is important for SEO for three main reasons:

• To focus on the most important keyword terms
• Control the flow of link equity around the site
• Ensure spiders can crawl the site

Simple, eh. Yet many webmasters get it wrong.

Let's take a look at how to do it properly.

Evaluate The Competition

One you've decided on your message, and your plan, the next step is to layout your site structure.

Start by evaluating your competition. Grab your list of keyword terms, and search for the most popular sites listed under those terms. Take a look at their navigation. What topic areas do they use for their main navigation scheme? Do they use secondary navigation? Are there similarities in topic areas across competitor sites?

Open a spreadsheet, and list their categories, and title tags, and look for keyword patterns. You'll soon see similarities. By evaluating the navigation used by your competition, you'll get a good feel for the tried-n-true "money" topics.

You can then run these sites through metrics sites like Compete.com.

Use the most common, heavily trafficked areas as your core navigation sections.

The Home Page Advantage

Those who know how Page Rank functions can skip this section.

Your home page will almost certainly have the highest level of authority.

While there are a lot of debates about the merits of PageRank when it comes to ranking, it is fair to say that PageRank is rough indicator of a pages' level of authority. Pages with more authority are spidered more frequently and enjoy higher ranking than pages with lower authority. The home page is often the page with the most links pointing to it, so the home page typically has the highest level of authority. Authority passes from one page to the next.

For each link off a page, the authority level will be split.

For example - and I'm simplifying* greatly for the purposes of illustration - if you have a home page with a ten units of link juice, two links to two sub-pages would see each sub-page receive 5 points of link juice. If the sub-page has two links, each sub-sub would receive two units of link juice, and so on.

The important point to understand is that the further your pages are away from the home page, generally the less link juice those pages will have, unless they are linked from external pages. This is why you need to think carefully about site structure.

For SEO purposes, try to keep your money areas close to the home page.

*Note: Those who know how Page Rank functions will realise my explaination above is not technically correct. The way Page Rank splits is more sophisticated than that given in my illustration. For those who want a more technical breakdown of the Page Rank calculations, check out Phils post at WebWorkshop.

How Deep Do I Go?

Keeping your site structure shallow is a good rule of thumb. So long as you main page is linked well, all your internal pages will have sufficient authority to be crawled regularly. You also achieve clarity and focus.

A shallow site structure is not just about facilitating crawling. After all, you could just create a Google Site Map and achieve the same goal. Site structure is also about selectively passing authority to your money pages, and not wasting it on pages less deserving. This is straightforward with a small site, but the problem gets more challenging as you site grows.

One way to mange scale is by grouping your keyword terms into primary and secondary navigation.

Main & Secondary Navigation

Main navigation is where you place your core topics i.e. the most common, highly trafficked topics you found when you performed your competitive analysis. Typically, people use tabs across the top, or a list down the left hand side of the screen. Main navigation appears on all other pages.

Secondary navigation consists of all other links, such as latest post, related articles, etc. Secondary navigation does not appear on every page, but is related to the core page upon which it appears.

One way to split navigation is to organize your core areas into the main navigation tabs across the top, and provide secondary navigation down the side.

For example, let's say you main navigation layout looked like this:

Each time I click a main navigation term, the secondary navigation down the left hand side changes. The secondary navigation are keywords related to the core area.

For those of you who are members, Aaron has an indepth video demonstration on Site Architecture And Internal Linking, as well as instruction on how to integrate and mange keywords.

Make Navigation Usable

Various studies indicate that humans are easily confused when presented with more than seven choices. Keep this in mind when creating your core navigation areas.

If you offer more than seven choices, find ways to break things down further. For example, by year, manufacturer, model, classification, etc.

You can also break these areas down with an "eye break" between each. Here's a good example of this technique on Chocolate.com:

Search spiders, on the other hand, aren't confused by multiple choices. Secondary navigation, which includes links within the body copy, provides plenty of opportunity to place keywords in links. Good for usability, too.

As your site grows, new content is linked to by secondary navigation. The key is to continually monitor what content produces the most money/visitor response. Elevate successful topics higher up you navigation tree, and relegate loss-making topics.

Use your analytics package to do this. In most packages, you can get breakdowns of the most popular, and least popular, pages. Organise this list by "most popular". Your most popular pages should be at the top of your navigation tree. You also need to consider your business objectives. Your money pages might not be the same pages as your most popular pages, so it's also a good idea to set up funnel tracking to ensure the pages you're elevating also align with your business goals.

If a page is ranking well for a term, and that page is getting good results, you might want to consider adding a second page targeting the same term. Google may then group the pages together, effectively giving you listings #1 and #2.

Subject Themeing

A variant on Main & Secondary Navigation is subject themeing.

Themeing is a controversial topic in SEO. The assumption is that the search engines will try and determine the general theme of your site, therefore you should keep all your pages based around a central theme.

The theory goes that you can find out what words Google places in the same "theme" by using the tilde ~ command in Google. For example, if you search on ~ cars, you'll see "automobile", "auto", "bmw" and other related terms highlighted in the SERP results. You use these terms as headings for pages in your site.

However, many people feel that themes do not work, because search engines return individual pages, not sites. Therefore, it follows that the topic of other pages on the site aren't directly attributable to the ranking of an individual page.

Without getting into a debate about the the existence or non-existence of theme evaluation in the algorithm, themeing is a great way to conceptually organize your site and research keywords.

Establish a central theme, then create a list of sub-topics made up of related (~) terms. Make sub-topics of sub-topics. Eventually, your site resembles a pyramid structure. Each sub-topic is organized into a directory folder, which naturally "loads" keywords into URL strings, breadcrumb trails, etc. The entire site is made up of of keywords related to the main theme.

Bruce Clay provides a good overview of Subject Themeing.

Bleeding Page Rank?

You might also wish to balance the number of outgoing links with the number of internal links. Some people are concerned about this aspect, i.e. so-called "bleeding page rank". A page doesn't lose page rank because you link out, but linking does effect the level of page rank available to pass to other pages. This is also known as link equity.

It is good to be aware of this, but not let it dictate your course of action too much. Remember, outbound linking is a potential advertisement for your site, in the form of referral data in someone else logs. A good rule of thumb is to balance the number of internal links with the the number of external links. Personally, I ignore this aspect of SEO site construction and instead focus on providing visitor value.

Link Equity & No Follow

Another way to control the link equity that flows around your site is to use the no-follow tag. For example, check out the navigational links at the bottom of the page:

As these target pages aren't important in terms of ranking, you could no-follow these pages ensure your main links have more link equity to pass to other pages.

Re-Focus On The Most Important Content

This might sound like sacrilege, but it can often pay not to let search engines display all the pages in your site.

Let's say you have twenty pages, all titled "Acme". Links containing the keyword term "Acme" point to various pages. What does the algorithm do when faced with these pages? It doesn't display all of them for the keyword term "Acme". It choses the one page it considers most worthy, and displays that.

Rather than leave it all to the algorithm, it often pays to pick the single most relevant page you want to rank, and 301 all the other similarly-themed pages to point to it. Here's some instructions on how to 301 pages.

By doing this, you focus link equity on the most important page, rather than splitting it across multiple pages.

Create Cross Referenced Navigational Structures

Aaron has a good tip regarding cross-referencing within the secondary page body text. I'll repeat it here for good measure:

This idea may sound a bit complex until you visualize it as a keyword chart with an x and y axis.

Imagine that a, b, c, ... z are all good keywords.
Imagine that 1, 2, 3, ... 10 are all good keywords.

If you have a page on each subject consider placing the navigation for a through z in the sidebar while using links and brief descriptions for 1 through 10 as the content of the page. If people search for d7, or b9, that cross referencing page will be relevant for it, and if it is done well it does not look too spammy. Since these types of pages can spread link equity across so many pages of different categories make sure they are linked to well high up in the site's structure. These pages works especially well for categorized content cross referenced by locations.

Related Reading:

• Internal Anchor Text - How To Improve Rankings Using Appropriate Link Text
• Navigational Structure - How To Keep It Modular
• Search Engine Saturation - How Much Of Your Website Is Indexed By Search Engines
• Linking Out To Quality Sites - How Search Engines View Outbound Links
• Jim Boykin - How to Achieve Higher Rankings and Stay out of Google Hell Via Optimized Internal Linking
• SeoTheory - Internal Links Vs External Links
• SEOMoz - Matt Cutts On No-Follow
• Wikipedia - 301 Redirection

Techcrunch is publishing a rumour that Yahoo might be looking to sell off Yahoo Answers.

"Yahoo Answers, which was launched in late 2005, is a staggeringly huge site. Recent Comscore stats say the service attracts nearly 150 million monthly visitors worldwide and generates 1.3 billion monthly page views. That's 67% unique visitor growth in the last year. Yahoo as a whole, though, has nearly 100 billion monthly page views, so it isn't a material percentage of total Yahoo traffic"

Nice traffic, however Yahoo Answers is full of junk content. There are now numerous competitors in the Q&A space.

If you're first mover, as Yahoo was, you can get away with low quality content, but as competition increases, the quality must also increase in order to keep people hooked. Whilst hugely successful in terms of traffic numbers, Yahoo Answers now must to respond to increasing competition. With rumours of a sale, it looks like Yahoo may instead be refocusing their efforts on their core business.

This is an example of the "curve to quality" pattern. First movers can get away with junk content for a while, but eventually competitors will up the quality and gain audience share as a result. This reinforces the need to adapt business models in light of competition, and the need to avoid commodity status.

We can see the same curve to quality pattern in the blog world.

Jackob Neilsen was advising a world leader in his field on what to do about his website. The guy wanted to know if he should start a blog.

Neilsens answer was no, and here's why:

"Blog postings will always be commodity content: there's a limit to the value you can provide with a short comment on somebody else's work. Such postings are good for generating controversy and short-term traffic, and they're definitely easy to write. But they don't build sustainable value. Think of how disappointing it feels when you're searching for something and get directed to short postings in the middle of a debate that occurred years before, and is thus irrelevant."

Also check out the graph "variability of posting quality" in Nielsen's post.

I suspect Nielsen is on the right track. Blog traffic is reportedly at an all time high, but they still only accounts for 0.73% of US traffic. Perhaps as the quality of the average blog increases, so to will the audience share.

Due to the pressure of competition, low quality content eventually becomes commodity.

Do you read mee-too search blogs? Not many people do. Most people gravitate towards the blogs that offer the highest perceived level of quality, as opposed to those that repeat the same news found elsewhere. Mee-too content is no longer an effective strategy in the blog world, or the newspaper world, as syndicated news services are finding out. There is simply too much competition.

There are other reasons why you might want to focus on quality as a strategy.

Google will always try to filter out low quality, commodity content in order to heighten user experience. Google approaches this problem in a number of ways.

In the remote quality rater document, Google lists a range of categories raters can attribute to web content. One category is "Not Relevant". This category applies to "news items that appear outdated" and "lower quality pages about the topic". Obviously, "lower quality" is a relative term and the comparison would be made between competing SERP results. Pages categorised as "Not Relevant" will receive lower SERP placement.

Also consider the notion of poison words. Posion words are words the search engines equate with content of low quality. If, just for example, forum content is found to frequently be of low quality, then it is reasonable to assume Google will look for markers that the site is a forum and mark this content down as a result. Markers might include a link back to a popular forum software script, for example.

This metric would not be taken in isolation as there are various other quality markers Google use. However, if the content is low quality and appears in a low quality format, you stand less chance of ranking for competitive queries.

The same might apply to commercial content, especially such content that appears in non-commercial query results.

Google's business model involves advertisers paying for clicks in the form of Adwords. The main SERPs are essentially a loss leader that facilitate people clicking on text advertisements. The main SERPs are the reason people use Google.

Such a business model would be supported by an algorithm that rewarded quality, informative content in the main SERPs. It could operate by downgrading any content deemed as purely commercial, and this would involve looking for commercially-oriented poison words. Posion words in this context might include "Buy Now", "Business Address", and other variants unique to commercial content. This would "encourage" those with commercial messages to list with Adwords because they would have trouble appearing in the main SERPs. It is unlikely such an algorithmn would apply to commercial queries, however.

Google filters in this way because there is much competition for keyword queries. Google looks to find the best answer. The answer of highest quality, both in terms of relevance and searcher satisfaction. As competition increases, the answers will get better, which is why you must aim to stay high on the quality curve.

Since we have a number of popular Firefox extensions, I frequently get asked how to update Firefox extensions. Rather that writing 3 emails a week I figure it was quicker to jot down a quick blog post. To update or uninstall an extension you first have to click into the add-ons panel.

When you get inside the extensions area (by following the path highlighted above) you will see an Add-ons window with a Find Updates button at the bottom of it. That is an easy way to update many extensions at once.

The other way to update or uninstall is to scroll on an extension and click on it.

• If you left click, Disable and Uninstall buttons will appear.
• If you right click on an extension you will see a menu pop up with the option to Uninstall the extension. This menu also gives an option for you to Find Update.

Any time you do an update or uninstall you have to restart Firefox for it to take effect. If you uninstall an extension that you want to reinstall, go to the source where you downloaded it from to be able to reinstall it again. Instructions for installing an extension are well laid out on the SEO for Firefox page.

So, you've decided on a new project. What next?

This post follows on from my posts Are You An Innovator, Immitator, or Idiot?, and Market Research Using Google Adwords. If you're starting out on a new project, have a read of those posts before we move on.

Planning

"He who fails to plan, plans to fail" - Proverb

"A good plan today is better than a perfect plan tomorrow" - Proverb

Contrary to what many business books will tell you, unless you're looking to raise capital, you don't need an extensive business plan before you start. However, having no plan at all is often a recipe for disaster. When writing your plan, aim for a concise, one page explanation that clearly states where you're going and how you'll get there.

When I write my plans, the plan also includes the message - more on the message soon - and then, at the very bottom of the page, I leave myself a reminder: "Change Everything!". I write "Change Everything" because I know my plan will change and adapt as I go along. The best business plans are fluid, because the tides of the market will forever change beneath you. Rigid planning can easily put you off-course when the winds inevitably change.

Developing The Message

The message is a simple outline of who you are and what you do. It is also referred to as the elevator pitch. It is used to communicate, quickly and concisely, what you're about, and to help you make a myriad of decisions on design, to SEO, to marketing.

It can be difficult to reduce your message to a clear simple paragraph, so here are a few tips on how to do it. One useful technique is to think of it in terms of questions and answers.

Ask, and answer, the following questions:

• What value do you add for your customers?
• What problem do I solve?
• What outcome will resolves this problem?
• What do I do differently from my competitors?
• What adjectives and nouns best illustrate the above points?

Then blend the answers into a tight, focused two paragraph explanation of what you do and the benefit your product or service provides someone else.

For example:

"We are Acme.com. We provide online human resources programs for small companies that lack a dedicated human resources division . Our products and services help companies meet their human resources objectives at low cost, and the service is available to our customers 24 hours a day, seven days a week via our easy-to-use web site. Some of our clients have reduced staff-turnover by up to 50% after using our services".

Needs, work, but that's a start.

Next, test your message out on friends and colleagues. Are they crystal clear about what you do and benefits your provide? Your message flows through everything you do, from domain name selection, to site design, to marketing.

Domain Name

Domain names are easy to register. The hard part is finding the right name.

As I'm sure you're aware, the domain name market is fiercely competitive, so finding the ideal name can be difficult, not to mention expensive if you need to go to the resale market.

When selecting a name, which will likely also be the name of your product or service, consider the search value of names. Google places a lot of emphasis on keywords within the domain name, and the link text pointing to a site. This may change in the future, but it has held true for the past few years.

Try combining your main search keyword term bolted to another descriptive term. "SeoBook", "CarWarehouse, "RealEstateGold" etc. The plus side is that you'll get keywords in the links pointing to your site. Directories, link partners, and most forms of text advertising, tend to place your domain/company name in the link text by default. If your domain/company name doesn't include keyword, you may find it more difficult to get keyword terms in the links.

The downside of this approach is that the brand tends towards the generic, and can therefore be less memorable. Another approach is to ignore the search aspect, and make up a completely unique name. This is the traditional approach to branding. One advantage of such an approach is that you'll "own" any keyword searches for this term.

Web Design

Your web design needs to be consistent with your message.

While anyone can knock up a web design, I'd advise you not to take this approach unless you're an accomplished designer. Hire a professional instead. First impressions count, and when an exit is only a click away, you must make a good one, else all your other marketing efforts could be wasted.

I use the message as a key part of the the design brief. Web designers appreciate this detail, and will be able to design a look and feel that incorporates your message into the design. For example, if your brand is a luxury brand, then the website should look glossy in order to stay consistent with your message. The same glossy design will not work for a more accessible, utilitarian brand like, say, Google. The message would be mixed, which could lead to visitor confusion. The story you're telling wouldn't ring true.

Your message helps govern design questions.

I'll post more indepth about site construction and architecture, but for the meantime, keep it simple, functional, fast-loading, and ensure your design supports and reinforces your message. As I mentioned in my post on Brand Building Tips On A Budget, everything you do on your site must tell a consistent story. Everything you do is your brand - your message. Great design is of little use if the copy writing is sub-standard, and vice-versa. Get all those little, but important, details right. Broken links, 404s, slow load times, confusing navigation, unexpected surprises - they all part of your brand experience.

Promotion Ideas

As you're reading this site, you already know the value of internet marketing, specifically search marketing. So, I won't go over that aspect. I'm sure you've read the book ;)

But what other cheap promotional options are open to you?

Here are a few ideas that work well, and corresponding links telling you the hows and the whys:

• Link Widely And Freely
• Submit to RSS services
• Submit To Relevant Directories
• Engage With Social Media
• Post On Forums And Community Sites
• Distribute Articles
• Issue Press Releases
• Post Classified Ads
• Give Stuff Away -Virally
• Create Plug-Ins
• Run Awards
• Interview People
• Get Interviewed

Iteration

The most important aspect of site marketing is to measure performance. You want to run with the winners and cut the losers.

Repeat.

Are you getting sales from the search terms you rank for? If not, why not? Is your message inconsistent with the search terms you are targeting? Refine your message, or target different keyword terms. This is why it is important to test drive your SEO keyword terms using Adwords before you engage in SEO. You can test to see if your keyword terms and your message sync-up to create the desired result.

You need good analytics to track the value of each channel you use. The important point is to be able to identify where the traffic is coming from and, most importantly, what this traffic does when it gets to your site. There is no point ranking for the high traffic terms if none of that traffic converts to desired action.

You've probably heard the term content is king?

It isn't.

Conversion is king.

Content might help you get a visitor to convert to desired action, or it might lead them astray. Once again, ask yourself if your content is on-message. Is your content consistent with your business goals? Is your content helping you achieve your business goals?

Interesting news item about the future of search.

Analyst Sue Feldman presented her views to the Enterprise Search Summit West.

Key points:

• A convergence of tools in search.
• Move away from today's transaction based platform towards a knowledge platform.
• Improved capibilities in terms of concepts, relationships, and modes of communication, including speech
• One problem that needs solving is selection: which information do you trust?
• Getting the right information to the right people at the right time.
• Move from transactional computing to user-centric interaction models. See my early post about relationships.
• More automation of knowledge work across multiple devices.
• Search will eventually be embedded in the platforms and applications, as opposed to a separate function.
• Search will be at the center of interactive computing as search is language based - the human mode of communication.

Full post here.