taxonomy and seo sla 05-06-10(jc)
TRANSCRIPT
Copyright © 2010 Earley & Associates Inc. All Rights Reserved.
SLA Cincinnati Taxonomy, Metadata & Search Optimization
Seth EarleyPresident [email protected]
May 6th, 2010
Jeff CarrSenior [email protected]
Today’s Agenda
• Taxonomy and Enterprise Architecture
• Introduction & Overview of Taxonomy & SEO
• Importance of Aligning Different Perspectives
• Recommendations
• Q&A Session
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• Co-author of Practical Knowledge Management from IBM Press
• 16 years experience building content and knowledge management systems, 25+ years experience in technology
• Former Co-Chair, Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, Science and Technology Council Metadata Project Committee
• Founder of the Boston Knowledge Management Forum
• Former adjunct professor at Northeastern University
• Currently working with enterprises to develop knowledge and digital asset management systems, taxonomy and metadata governance strategies
• Founder of Taxonomy Community of Practice – host monthly conference calls of case studies on taxonomy derivation and application. http://finance.groups.yahoo.com/group/TaxoCoP
• Co-founder Search Community of Practice:
http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/SearchCoP
Seth Earley, Founder & President, Earley & Associates
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• Bachelor of Commerce from the University of Alberta with a major in Management Information Systems (MIS) and a minor in International Business
• Multi-disciplinary foundation in the areas of:
• search engine marketing
• information architecture
• web analytics
• project management
• business analysis
• web development
• Responsible for the strategy, development and implementation of numerous web-based initiatives
• Expert in SharePoint Information Architecture
• Expert in eCommerce taxonomies, faceted search and heuristic analysis
• All around good guy
Jeff Carr, Senior Consultant, Earley & Associates
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• Searching
• Browsing
• Finding
It’s all about…
Copyright © 2010 Earley & Associates Inc. All Rights Reserved.
Taxonomy and Enterprise Architecture Frameworks
Taxonomy is a Foundation…
• It is a system for classification• It allows for a means to organize documents, digital
assets and web content• Helps us fine tune search tools and mechanisms• Creates a common language for sharing concepts• Allows for a coherent approach to integrate information
sources• It is a common language for business processes
Goals of a Taxonomy
• Allow for knowledge discovery
• Improve usability of applications as well as learnability of applications
• Reduce the cost of delivering services, developing products and conducting operations
• Improve operational efficiencies by allowing for reuse of information and assets rather than recreation
• Improve search results and applicability (both precision and recall)
Taxonomy Definition
• Taxonomy is a system for organizing concepts and categorizing content– Expresses hierarchical
relationships (parent/child)– Arranged in a tree-like
structure, with top level categories that branch out to reveal sub-categories and terms in varying levels of depth
– Dictionary of preferred terminology
Products
Games
Card games
Action figures
Board games
Brands
Milton Bradley
Scrabble
Disney
Battleship
Taxonomy and Metadata
• It is the “is – ness” of a piece of content
• And the “about – ness” of a piece of content
• This is a Product Description
• It is about the Motorola Razr
Taxonomies are the organizing principle behind metadata and the values that populate metadata fields
Taxonomies are the organizing principle behind metadata and the values that populate metadata fields
Metadata for a product page in a content management system
Title
DateAuthor
Features
Product_Name
Category
Doc_ID Doc_Type
“is – ness”
“about – ness”
FAQ
Product
Press release
Specification
Promotion
Assets in a content management system need to be tagged with metadata for retrieval and management of information
Taxonomy and Metadata
The (Traditional) Data Architect View of Metadata
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Operational Metadata• Data source description• Data fields• Data structure• File description• Database definition (e.g.
ddl)• External files lineage
ETL – Metadata • Rule descriptions• Data cleansing • Data extension• Data transition
Database Design/physicals Rules for • Modeling data• Security• Building • Cube definition • Aggregation
BI Metadata • Norms for report creation• Report-Folder• Report-Format• Report-Execution• Data mining ProcessModeling
Tools
Source data Target database
Metadata Metadata
BI/Reporting Tools
Metadata Metadata
Extract/Transform/LoadMetadata
Courtesy of Stu Carty – Gavlian Research
ETL Tools
Parallel Perspectives
• What is the difference between a data architect, a taxonomist and an information architect?
• Data architects are concerned with structured data and technical aspects of applications and database design
• Taxonomists are concerned with unstructured content semantics and the meaning of terms
• Information architects consider how structured data elements, unstructured content meaning and user intent combine to form the user experience
The (Traditional) Taxonomist View of Metadata
• Taxonomy: system for organizing and classifying content• Metadata: information about our content, housekeeping, as well as semantic
and structural information• Content Objects: groups of metadata that are assembled into components
that are then assembled into pages or documents
How will taxonomy surface on the front-facing application?
What do the wireframes suggest?
How do people interact with content?
How does the content architecture deliver the front-end design?
Enterprise Architecture Requires a Holistic View
Enterprise architecture
“A comprehensive framework used to manage and
align an organization's Information Technology (IT)
assets, people, operations, and projects with its
operational characteristics. In other words, the enterprise
architecture defines how information and technology will
support the business operations and provide benefit for
the business.” The National Institutes of Health
http://enterprisearchitecture.nih.gov/About/What/
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Taxonomy Frameworks in Enterprise Architecture
Case Example:Motorola’s Global
Taxonomy FrameworkServed Multiple Processes
Case Example:Motorola’s Global
Taxonomy FrameworkServed Multiple Processes
Browsing & filtering
Compare product
Related documents
Financial reporting
Business intelligence Program Management
Product Lifecycle Management
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From Technical Design to User Experience…
Developing a technical model of content, assets and processes…
Case Example:American Greetings
Case Example:American Greetings
…becomes the foundation for a flexible, intuitive user experience
Example Trends Which Require Solid IA
• Business Intelligence needs metadata on structured data as the basis for quantitative analysis, taxonomy on unstructured content for the results of analysis
• Extend traditional quantitative BI with qualitative BI from unstructured content once a taxonomy is applied:– analysis of risk/no risk claims by disease category– analysis of call center issues by product to monitor a recall– analysis of ad placement effectiveness by social media context
• Master Data Management needs taxonomy – both aim to define a “single version of the truth”– MDM to eliminate structured data redundancy– Taxonomy to eliminate unstructured content ambiguity
Ideal Scenario: Master Taxonomy as a Service
Example from another client – Taxonomy as a service
• Each group of stakeholders has different issues– Different timelines– Different terminology– Battling old ways of working– Different workflows
Marketing & CMO
Finance & CFO
Manufacturing
Business Intelligence
Legal & CSO
Merchant Team
FulfillmentCustomer Service
IT Team & CIO
Challenges in Enterprise Architecture
Different Clock Speeds
Primary driver “Clock speed”
Constituencies Technology challenges
Web Content Consistency in branding, internal efficiencies
Medium to fast
Web developers, content managers, content creators
Exposing taxo to CMS, integration with search
Enterprise data standards
Cross platform integration, business intelligence, metadata modeling, data warehousing
Very slow to slow
Data architects, standards boards, data modelers, business intelligence
“Source of truth”, difficulty integrating metadata standards
E Commerce Web site sales. Need to support customer experience
Very fast Merchandisers, e commerce development team, marketing
Commerce platforms do not necessarily leverage capabilities. Updates to classification are not a priority
Product development
Product development efficiencies, speed to market
Fast Engineering, Product development, product marketers
Product life cycle management systems usually self contained
Structure and terminology to support non text asset location and reuse
Reconcile vendor product metadata with structure and format for catalog, merchandising, order management
Facets and attributes based on taxonomy resolve with search user experience best practices
Semantic relationships for related products, controlled terminology for merchandisers to support specific promotions
Content and document types, topics/subjects, audiences, etc to support unstructured information
Digital Asset Management
E commerce suite
FAST
Guided navigation
Cross sell/up sellContent management
Product taxonomy
Different Terminology
Product taxonomy
Different Workflows
BI/Reporting
Finance
Brick and Mortar
Ad CampaignsSignage
www.Bestbuy.com
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Difficulty Changing Paradigms
“Taxonomy values are just a list of terms…” Data Architect
Occasion
Birthday
Wedding
Halloween
Tone
Funny
Romantic
Heartfelt
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Caption = BDY FATHER FRM DAUGHOccasion
= Birthday
Recipient = Father
Sender = Daughter
“We have everything we need to know about our products from the SKU…” Merchandiser
“We can drive content semantics from composite database keys…” Database Architect
“I’m more comfortable indexing content than dealing with back end
systems…” Taxonomist
Taxonomy defines the unstructured half of Enterprise Architecture
What unstructured information does the business need to organize?
Which of these are shared among departments or business processes?
Which are specific to a functional area or business initiative?
Products & Services
IndustrySectors
Policies &Compliance
Customer Relationships
MarketingAssets
QualitativeMeasures
EnterpriseTaxonomies
Use Taxonomy to Unify Business Operations
The Evolution of Taxonomy
• Taxonomy has evolved from a library science/ information architecture/ content organization perspective
• Used to improve the ability to find content once you arrive at a web site
• Perspective: internal, focused on “self selected” audiences
• Typically does not consider how people arrive on your site, just that they are there and tries to direct users down an appropriate path
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Why is Taxonomy Important?
• Main interaction customers have with your site– They are a key element of good design and findability
• Even the best taxonomies need a little spring cleaning – They can become disorganized, out of control over time– They can fall out of line with industry trends and competitors– They can be mismatched with user terminology and be ignored
by search engines
• Taxonomy Heuristics are Best Practices that ensure:1. Content is findable
2. Taxonomy maintenance and growth is based on methodology
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What is SEO?
• Part of Internet Marketing• Strategies used to conduct marketing
activities on the web in an effort to attract and convert targeted visitors into customers
• Includes• Website design, copywriting, online
promotion, social media, and search engine optimization etc…
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• Leverage site terms and organizing principles• Including preferred and variant terms, related terms (i.e.; taxonomy and
thesaurus structures)
• Ultimate Goal• To increase the amount of relevant and targeted traffic to your website
Why is SEO Important?
• Search engine optimization is a key activity in acquiring qualified traffic to your site
• If ignored, technical and contextual factors can seriously impede performance
•
• Continuous process requiring constant monitoring– Seasonal trends in search behavior– Identifying new or hot products– Competitors
• Informs site taxonomies to ensure:1. Effective landing pages
2. Visits turn into conversions
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Why Taxonomy & SEO?
• Integrating internal and external perspectives
• Taxonomy– Used to improve the ability to find content once you arrive at a web site– Internal perspective focused on “self selected” audiences– Typically does not consider how people arrive on your site, just that they
are there and tries to direct users down an appropriate path
• Search Engine Optimization– Used to improve the ability to find a web site at a macro level– External perspective focused on driving traffic, attracting attention from
a broader audience– Typically does not consider how people find content once they are on
your site, just that they find it
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They Should Work Together…
• Taxonomy drives information organization– Powers navigation and search– Enhances the user experience
• SEO informs taxonomy values– Incorporates customer perspectives / searcher behaviors
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Taxonomy SEO
Evolution Library science / IA / content organization
Marketing / e-commerce / search tool / technology
Purpose Improve site content findability Improve the ability to find a site
Audience “Self selected” / Specialized Broader / Generalized
Perspective Internal “competing” content External competing web sites
Focus What users do once they arrive at your site, not how they find it
How users find your site, not what they do once they get there
Misalignment of Terminology
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I’d like to pick up some new
accessories for my PlayStation 3
Not sure where to look so let’s do a search to see what’s out there
“PS3 Accessories”
“PS3 Accessories”
Just saw an advertisement from Best Buy for PlayStation 3 Accessories
X
I think PS3 = PlayStation 3
Website Findability
• What’s the scope of the challenge?
• “More than 12 Billion searches conducted in July 2008”
Search Engine Watch – Sep 2, 2008
• “1 trillion (as in 1,000,000,000,000) unique URLs”
Official Google Blog – Jul 25, 2008
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Differing Perspectives
• From the perspective of the Searcher…– An evolution from “give me what I said” to “give me what I want” – Don’t always know what they want– Often begin with ambiguous search queries followed by
refinement
• Does the topic of each page on your site accurately represent the language potential customers are using to find your site?
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Search Result Delivery
• The process for serving a set of results for any search query includes the following elements:
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I
Query AnalysisEvaluation of user input against query dependent
factors (i.e. word order, proximity)
Document RetrievalFetching of documents that match the user query (1000)
Document RankingOrdering of the results retrieved
PresentationSearch engine result pages
EEII
• images• news• local• shopping• personalized
Differing Perspectives
• From the perspective of the search engine…
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Implicitly derives the topic or meaning of a page by analyzing and parsing page content
Topic of this page is PlayStation 3,
correct?
Topical Analysis of Page Content
• Ideally, we’d like to see PlayStation related terminology dominating the text consumed by the search engine– Inferred topic: limited item offers– Supporting terminology – furniture, services, health, home et al.
semantically unrelated to the intended concept
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Google Uses Over 200 Signals For Ranking”
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Overlap & Alignment
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SEOTaxonomy
Label Choice
Synonym Identification
Terminology Research
Relationships
Metadata Optimization
Grouping principles
Facet Construction
Polyhierarchy
Clean Coding
Internal Link Structure
Content Hierarchy
Link Popularity
Balance & Term Volume
Content Freshness
URL Structure
Inbound Anchor Text
Page Speed
Breadth & Depth
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“Term Selection”
Synonyms
• Important for both Taxonomy and SEO– Label selection and user experience
• What’s will resonate best with your users?– Search thesaurus
• Ensure appropriate query expansion
• Popular geographic references– “Las Vegas” vs “Sin City”– “Detroit” vs “Motor City”
• Acronyms– “FBI” and “Federal Bureau of Investigation”– “SAT” and “Scholastic Achievement Test” or “Scholastic Aptitude
Test”
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Misspellings
• Important for on-site search– “did you mean…”
• May be a rich source of additional traffic– Not recommended for inclusion in page
text (do not intentionally misspell words)– Plan carefully and be creative
• E.G. “blue-ray” vs “blu-ray”
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Term Proximity & Placement
• The closer together terms appear, the more closely related they are deemed
• Word order can matter• Special formatting of terms in page
content places a slightly higher importance on the word or phrase itself– Page headlines (<h1> through <h5>)– Bolding & italicizing – Link text
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Related Terminology
• Identification of supporting words or phrases that should be used in conjunction with preferred terms
• Used to enhance and support the overall theme of the page by pulling together a tightly related topic
• E.G. LEED– Acronym for Leadership in Energy & Environmental Design– Key themes include:
• Training, Accreditation, Certification, Exams• Construction, Building, Architecture, Homes, Design• Green, Energy, Rating, Sustainability
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The Importance of Metadata
• HTML elements that provide structured metadata about a web page (page source)
• Key attributes to consider include the page title (<title>) and the meta description (<meta name=“description>)
• Often forgotten or neglected– Negatively affect the user experience
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<title>Hasbro Network</title> <meta name="Description" content="“ /> <meta name="Keywords" content="“ />
The Importance of Metadata
• Opportunity to speak directly to potential visitors• When done right, click-through rates increase
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<title>Enjoy Poker Online With PartyPoker.com - Play Holdem, Omaha and More!</title> <meta name="Description" content=“Play online poker at PartyPoker.com. You'll find Texas Hold'em, Omaha, Omaha Hi/Lo, 7 Card Stud &amp; 7 Card Stud Hi/Lo. Huge Poker Tournaments and a Free Poker School. Choose the free poker software download or our new no download play in your browser poker game.“ /> <meta name="Keywords" content=" poker, online poker, play poker, poker room, poker game, video poker, internet poker, texas holdem, poker rules, poker school, poker tournaments, free poker, download, partypoker, party poker, partypoker.com“ />
Alignment of Terminology
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I’d like to pick up some new
accessories for my PlayStation 3
Not sure where to look so let’s do a search to see what’s out there
“PlayStation 3 Accessories” “PlayStation 3 Accessories”
Just saw an advertisement from Best Buy for PlayStation 3 accessories
A Little SEO Knowledge Can Be Dangerous
• Don’t over do it!• There’s no point in
over-optimizing your site to obtain traffic that is not targeted
• Might get you more visits in the short term, but at what cost?
• Goal – attract qualifiedvisitors
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It Can Be a Delicate Balance
• Oftentimes there’s a trade-off between optimization, taxonomy and the user experience– Long labels can cause navigation to wrap or be hidden from view
– Repetition of terminology reduces ability to scan
• Always consider the end-user perspective• Research both terminology and related websites
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Sources For Keyword Research
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Search Logs
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Title Tag
Navigation LabelsHeader
Tags
Page Content
External Link Text Internal
Link Text
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• Primary or Target Keyword• Supporting Terminology
• Includes words and phrases that often appear in conjunction with the primary keyword
Summary
• Taxonomy represents the internal perspective– Drives the customer experience while on the site
• SEO represents the external perspective– Influences how people find a site in the first place
• The alignment of perspectives– Search essentially becomes a portal to your site by presenting a
multitude of unique access points directly to relevant content at the exact moment in time when someone is searching for you
– Enhances the user experience by enabling findability at both the macro and micro levels
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Additional Resources
• Communities of Practice– Taxonomy: www.finance.groups.yahoo.com/group/TaxoCoP – SharePoint IA:
www.tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/SharePointIACoP – Search: www.tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/SearchCoP
• Upcoming Webinars– Taxonomy Community of Practice series:
www.earley.com/webinars – Technology Showcase series :
www.earley.com/webinars/technology-showcase – Jumpstarts: www.earley.com/webinars/jumpstarts
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About Earley & Associates
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• Focus: Information Architecture (“IA”) Services
• Founded: 1994
• Personnel: Twenty core team consultants, plus a network of other top industry experts• ECM and KM experts• taxonomy specialists• search experts• information architects• usability professionals• technology consultants• business process experts
• Headquarters: Boston, MA
• Consulting Philosophy: • Organizing Principles based on
business context and goals• Four Pillars - People, Content,
Process, and Technology
Core Capabilities
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EnterpriseSearch,
Portal Design,Collaboration
Records Management
WebsiteNavigation,Search &
SEO
Content Management
Taxonomy,Metadata,
IA& Usability
Program Management
Business Analysis / User Research
Technology Selection
Implementation Support
Socialization & Training
Governance
Workflow Management
Digital AssetManagement
RightsManagement
Security & Privacy
Management
Strategy
Success Metrics
Information Organization and Access Courses
AIIM Master Certification in IOA
4-day classes being held in:
• Chicago: July 26th – 29th
• Toronto: August 9th – 12th • Washington, DC: September 13th – 16th • San Francisco: September 20th – 23rd
• Houston: October 18th – 21st
Course Descriptions and Registration at: www.earley.com/training/aiim-courses
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Seth Earley
781-820-8080Follow me on twitter: sethearleyConnect with me on LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/sethearley
Jeff Carr
780-819-7275Follow me on Twitter: siftonparkConnect with me on LinkedIn:www.linkedin.com/in/siftonpark
Questions?
59www.earley.com