brown benin website architecture_excercise3

Website Architecture

Running head: WEBSITE ARCHITECTURE IMPACT

Exercise 3: Website Architecture and Its Impact on SEO

Benin Brown

Full Sail University

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Exercise 3: Website Architecture and Its Impact on SEO

In Richard Baxter's piece entitled, "Diagnose Critical Website Architecture Issues

for SEO (2009)" Mr. Baxter described how website architecture can impact a web site’s

performance in the search engines.

The article is relevant to Internet marketers because there are instances in which

website architecture problems cannot only adversely affect site findability but also user

experience.

Flat Site Architecture

Baxter opens the article by highlighting the necessity for building flat architecture

into web site design. This part of Baxter's argument can be summarized by saying that

sound website design calls for a minimal amount of page layers between the homepage or

top page and the deepest level page within the site. This is also known as flat

architecture. There are two primary benefits derived from having a flat architecture:

Fewer pages to crawl mean that important information will be easer for the search

engines to reach (Harris, 2007).

The easier it is for site users to get to the bottom of the site map, the more likely

users will remain on that path instead of abandoning it.

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Broken Links

Next Baxter addresses broken links as a threat to local SEO efforts. Baxter did

not provide information on why broken links can harm SEO. However, it is understood

that search engines see broken links as dead pages and this can damage the quality score

of the landing page or page linking to the non existent page (More Visibility, 2007).

Additionally, the search engines ask web site creators to not publish content containing

broken links.

Server Header Problems

A large part of SEO is developing web sites that are able to properly communicate

to the search engines. Baxter addressed this topic by discussing server header responses.

His suggestion is that search engine marketers check every single response code to ensure

that the website’s server doesn’t send out codes that confuse search engines. For

instance, if a web site has a 404 page that isn’t actually sending the proper 404 response

codes to the search engines, then the search engines might index the 404 pages. Upon the

search engine determining that a page that should have been coded as a 404 page was not

coded the search engine may choose to give the site a lower search ranking (Boggs,

2008).

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Duplicate Content

The next topic that Baxter visited was duplicate content. He cited this as one of

the most important elements of SEO. The main problem with duplicate content is that by

spreading (Ohye, 2007) links across several versions of the same page duplicate pages

can diminish the link popularity of the original or canonical page.

Canonical Redirects

Baxter also suggests that users check their sites to learn whether their sites are

indexed with and without the “www”. If both versions are indexed the solution is to set

up the canonical tag, which is also referred to as the 301-redirect tag. The URLs’ that

don’t start with “www” should be permanently redirected to the original page that begins

with “www”. Alternatively, a web master may need to move her site to a new domain

(Enge, n.d.). In doing so if the 301-redirect is not used a duplicate content problem might

arise and prevent the new site from getting its proper ranking. Utilizing the canonical tag

would therefore be appropriate in this instance, as well.

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References

Are broken links sinking your site? (2007, April 19). More Visibility. Retrieved March

20, 2010, from http://www.morevisibility.com/seoblog/broken-links.html

Baxter, R. (2009, April 10). Diagnose critical website architecture issues for SEO. Search

Engine Journal. Retrieved March 17, 2010, from

http://www.searchenginejournal.com/seo-website-architecture-issues/9760/

Boggs, C. (2008, September 26). Common problems with 404 error pages. Search Engine

Marketing, Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and Paid Search Advertising

(PPC) - Search Engine Watch (SEW). Retrieved March 21, 2010, from

http://searchenginewatch.com/3631002

Enge, E. (n.d.). 301 Redirects. Strategic SEO planning, technical SEO and link building.

Retrieved March 20, 2010, from http://www.stonetemple.com/articles/301-

redirects.shtml

Harris, S. (2007, July 6). Flat site architecture is SEO-friendly. Big Oak SEO Company.

Retrieved March 19, 2010, from http://www.bigoakinc.com/blog/flat-site-

architecture-is-seo-friendly

Ohye, M. (2007, September 12). Google, duplicate content caused by URL parameters,

and you. Official Google Webmaster Central Blog. Retrieved March 17, 2010,

from http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2007/09/google-duplicate-

content-caused-by-url.html

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