Conference Buddies

This presentation is of a more technical nature looking at site architecture challenges of today’s websites. Discussing what works, what doesn’t and how websites can be geared towards attracting a greater audience, and consequently, greater leads.

Moderator: Christine Churchill

Speakers:
Scott Polk, Director of Operations, Search & Social Media @scottpolk
Ted Ulle, Senior Search Analyst, Converseon, Inc. @TedUlle
Michael Martin, SEO Director of Project Management, Internet Marketing Inc. @googleandblog
Lyndsay Walker, Director of Online Marketing, Canada’s Web Shop @lyndseo

Ted Ulle @TedUlle

Don’t Build a Franken-Site!

Top Priority:

Your Marketing Goals! (even before keyword research)

• Optimize your keyword selection process
• Menu Labels & Navigation
• Content and Sales Copy
• Conversions

Clarity from the start

Marketing Purpose is #1 ALWAYS!

1. Keyword Strategy (user intent, who is your target)
2. Content 1 – can be placeholders (draft content)
3. Information Architecture
4. Back end metrics
5. Content 2 – full copy (final)
6. Graphic Design
7. “Web” Edit – finalize in HTML

Document Every Decision – Align the team

Menus & Navigation

• Menus labels are content
• Where am I?
• What can I do here?
• Single words or longer phrases
• Can be the “call to action”
• Too many choices equals no choice (7 is the limit for the main menu)

Final Web Edit

• Content Interacts with Layout
• CS is web typesetting
• You can kill good content or boost weak content with typography
• Study centuries of knowledge on typesetting

Showing Off

Works against business and marketing

i.e. Graphic Design, Fancy Programming “Features”, AJAX run amok

IT Folks are Writing Copy:

• Search Results
• Error Pages
• Auto Response

Examples of IT writing content:

• Failed Log-in Message “Search produced no results”
• Link for a 6-Figure Software Video “Open Demo” as a starting link
• Yahoo Directory Submission error message “Invalid Payment Instrument Data”

Things will go wrong

Thou Shalt Not Kludge:

• Better Late than Lousy
• Expect to Make trade off
• Keep your priorities straight

Michael Martin @googleandblog

Setting Your SEO Foundation

First Pillar: Canonicalization

• Resolving web content that has more than one possible URL
• You arbitrate to remove confusion from user and search engines
• Purpose is not so much preventing duplicate pages but link dilution
• Choose www or non-www and explicitly go with either
• Resolve default and index pages to the end slash
• Have a uniform link ref internally and externally
• Use 301 redirects

Second Pillar – Robots.txt

• Your site’s ground rules for SE
• Prevent “discoverability” of private pages or section
• Reduce spam
• Reduce bandwidth
• Identify sitemap.xml location

Third Pillar – Webmaster Tools & Center

• Google Webmaster Tools
• Bing Webmaster Center
• Yahoo Site Explorer

Have a Strong “C R We”

Canonical, Robots, Webmaster tools

Lyndsay Walker @lyndseo

Goals

1. Redesign site with minimum Search Engine Optimization wrinkles
2. Redesign with usability in mind
3. Don’t break stuff

Early Considerations

Web Host

• Server location

Server Platform

• Check Current apps and forms

Review the Existing Site

• Create a map of basic navigation
  • Level 1, 2, 3, 4 (use excel)
• Gather some data
  • Use Google Webmaster Tools, Yahoo Site Explorer and Bing Webmaster Center
  • Check the SERPs for the top ranked pages o key terms
  • Use your Analytics to find top performing pages

Verify Your Redirects

• www or non-www, default home page, etc.

Remap your Navigation

• Organize your content
• Check logs for user and spiders
• Card sorting (use cards to sort your content)

Transition – Card Sorting

• Cards with name of pages, 1 each
• User groups cards based on their perceived logic (by normal, adv, and SEO groups), look for patterns
• Repeat
• Review and look for patterns
• Decide on new navigation

Transition

Determine file names – keep or change, file type, and file naming strategy

• Hyphens vs. Underscores
• Use keyword (but don’t stuff)
• All lowercase

Prepping the New Site

• Custom 404 pages
• Use site template
• Put calls to action on this page!
• Update Robots.txt (what was block before)
• Run a link checker i.e. Xenu

After Launch

• Resubmit Site Maps to Search Engines
• Stalk your analytics!! (track your 404 pages)

Scott Polk @scottpolk

Data Organization

• Treat like database
• Flexible
• Logical
• Familiar

URL Structures

• Theme aligned
• User Exp / Conversion
• Keywords
• 1-2 directories deep max
• Use file extensions

HTML

• Content Stacking
• body, H1, textual content, related links, navigation link/header/footer

Internal Linking Structure

• Links should be related to topic
• Theme aligned
• Anchor text
• Control the flow of link equity (pass to top of theme)
• Technology