The website architecture is an extremely crucial aspect of search
engine optimization. The structure of your website plays an important
role in determining its placement in the search results and its
performance on the web.
Search engine optimization often begins
with the basic site structure itself. Because unless you have an
efficient website structure, there is no way you can seek to rank well
in the search engines. No matter the great content on your website and
the high volumes of inbound links it receives from the web, if the
basic site structure is flawed there is no way you can achieve the
desired ranking for your website. And this fact is well recognized by
major search engines. In fact, both Google and Microsoft Bing have
discussed the issue in their blogs and offered tips to enhance the same.
Tips from Google
Good
website architecture ensures that the search engine robots are able to
crawl and index the website easily and effortlessly. Here are some tips
to make that possible.
Robot.txt File
Check the robot.txt file of your website and make sure it has the correct status and does not return an error message.
Follow Industry Practices
While
moving to a new website or when you are using the 'Change of Address'
feature, make sure you consider the best industry practices and employ
them efficiently.
Proper Blockings
Review the settings
of the robots.txt file and make sure that all the web pages, especially
the ones that are rewritten or are dynamic are blocked` appropriately.
Rel=Canonical Attribute
Use
the rel=“canonical” attribute so that search engine crawlers do not
index the duplicate content on your domain. This attribute is extremely
helpful during the indexing process and informs Google that all the
duplicates are bundles up with the canonical and only the original page
should be indexed.
Tips from Bing
Descriptive File and Directory Names
Descriptive
names are not only easier for the users to relate to and remember but
they also increase the relevancy of web pages if you use your strategic
keywords and phrases in the names. In case of long file names, use
hyphens instead of underscores. This is because, hyphens help search
engine crawlers to parse long file names properly and treat them as
individual words rather than taking them to be a meaningless long
keywords.
Directory Depth
Your directory should never
be too deep. This is because search engine crawlers don't crawl
websites endlessly till they hit rock bottom. So, if you place
important content too deep in the directories, chances are it will
never be reached by the search engine crawlers. Therefore, focus on
creating shallow directory structures no more than four levels from the
root directory.
File Size of Web Pages
Limit the file size of each web page to about 150 KB. Search engine crawlers might just abandon heavier pages.
On-Page JavaScript & CSS Code
If
your web pages contain JavaScript or CSS, then make sure the content is
not inline within the HTML page. This is because JavaScript and CSS
generally make the web pages excessively long and thus they are not
crawled effectively.
301 Redirects
Use 301 redirects
for web pages that you move to a new domain or when you change the
names of files and folders in order to retain the link juice
Custom 404 pages
Implement
custom 404 error pages to inform the users about the absence of certain
web pages and know how to get back on your website. Make sure you
inform them about what went wrong, how they reached the particular page
and where they can go from there.
All these tips will help you
design a strong and efficient website structure that not only caters
well to the visitors but also fares well with the search engines!
