Basic Search Friendly Site Structure

One of the most important skills of a search engine optimization specialist is the ability to very quickly see the search engine readiness, or “friendliness”, of websites and the web documents housed within them. It doesn’t matter how well a SEO writes or how deep their keyword determination skills go, if a website is unwelcoming to search spiders, documents from the site will likely not rank and will certainly not rank as well as they should.

Making a website search engine friendly is far less difficult today than it once was, partially because of standardization in the way websites are built and spidered, and partially because the search engines themselves are far better at accessing web documents than in previous years. Nevertheless, there are a number of small steps webmasters and search engine optimizers can take to make a website and the documents housed within it as search engine friendly as possible. The first place to start is site structure.

Have you ever wondered why the vast majority of houses and buildings look similar to each other? Unless your home or office was designed by a famous or ambitious architect, chances are it looks very much like many other structures in a five-mile radius. There’s a reason for that. The basic design works well for the environment in which it is deployed. For instance, most houses in Canada are built with brick except those on the seismically active Pacific coast where wood is the primary building material. Why wood? Aside from the fact BC has plentiful forests, wood is more flexible in an earthquake and more likely to remain standing while the Earth moves under our feet.

Similarly, the vast majority of websites follow a very simple file and server structure, one that website builders, search engines spiders and website visitors are familiar with. The structure resembles a three to four tiered pyramid with the HOME or INDEX page at the top and subsequent pages cascading and expanding the base of the pyramid below. Each level of the website is noted by the URL as part of the directory tree. Please note, the hierarchy of the pyramid is not necessarily symmetrical. Some levels may be far larger than others.

i.e.: metamend.com/ would represent the top or first level. metamend.com/ppc-management/ represents a second level, and metamend.com/ppc-management/ppc-assurance.html, represent a third.

This is the simplest format for a website file structure. Though simple and straight forward, even the most basic designs can present search engine optimization specialists with challenges that need to be worked through. What, for instance, do you do if the basic file structure doesn’t match the organizational tree needed to make sense of the client’s business, services or other determiners such as geographic locations?

One method of dealing with information organization issues is the use of sub-domains, i.e.: subdomain.metamend.com/. In certain circumstances, using a sub-domain presents a search-friendly (or at least search-neutral) solution. Sub-domains were once used to represent a distinctly different section of a website or business. For example, a resort/spa website might use sub-domains to display different packages to different nationalities. (i.e.: uk-travel.spa-URL.com or fr-voyager.spa-URL.com)

At one time SEOs would advise clients to limit their websites to three levels if possible. That’s still good advice however, search engine spiders are able to penetrate far multiple levels of a website to find information. Keeping the structure basic is the best way to guarantee free passage of spiders. Another is the creation and inclusion of a simple text-based sitemap.