650 759 0316
Your Website Structure Tells Search Engines You Matter
Shari Thurow from Omni Marketing Interactive remarks in her lecture tours that “Not doing information architecture, or doing it wrong, is the most costly SEO mistake.” This is because site architecture is hard to change, especially after the search engines have been indexing you for a while, and your site must live with a bad structure and all its workarounds for a long time. What’s more, search engines detect workarounds (such as 301 redirects) and cost you juice for every one. Meaning you don’t matter quite as much.
Proper Site Architecture and Information Architecture are Essential
Information architecture is the art and science of organizing and labeling content to support usability and findability. This means findable by humans as well as search engines. The Brandwranglers approach includes technical steps, such as keyword research and competitive keyword analysis, as well as people-friendly things like experience design and keyword-driven copy that creates excitement. It gives the searcher a mental model of what you’re saying, letting them traverse your topics and offerings quickly on their own. There is another advantage: the search engines will see that humans can easily read your material.
User Experience and Site Architecture
Proper user experience (UX) design is critical for good SEO. A search-optimized website can drive organic traffic from keywords that matter to your brand. But search conversion will not result if the user’s expectations are not met after landing. If search results give one heading, but the heading does not appear on the click-to page, the user will be uncertain. A surprise-free experience is key to conversion. If a user searches for ‘luxury saddles’ she expects to find a known brand, content relevant to her search intent, and products that fit the ‘luxury’ part of her intent. Other experiences seldom result in a sale.
Brandwranglers knows how to make your pages look the same in search results as they do on your site, meaning user expectations are met and a workflow is established. We also understand how to keep your page prominent for the keywords that matter to your brand, and push it lower for those that do not.
Negative User Experience Can Bite
Here’s a key reason why it’s important to meet user expectations: some search engines will penalize your rankings for a bounce… that is, someone arrives and immediately clicks back to the search results page. The engines interpret that as a “not relevant” check against your page. Brandwranglers can ensure that searcher expectations are met.