Thomas is the CEO of a major corporation. He had supervised a recent website redesign project, loved the snazzy new look with bells and whistles created by a talented graphics designer – but was calling me to help with a problem. His beautiful new website wasn’t getting many visitors! “Why don’t people want to visit […]
Thomas is the CEO of a major corporation. He had supervised a recent website redesign project, loved the snazzy new look with bells and whistles created by a talented graphics designer – but was calling me to help with a problem.
His beautiful new website wasn’t getting many visitors!
“Why don’t people want to visit our lovely website?” Thomas wailed, genuinely puzzled that the results of his intensive efforts weren’t as rosy as he had expected. As a strategic SEO consultant, the reasons were glaringly obvious to me… but I had to soften the impact, and gently explain what went wrong.
Together, we quickly checked the site’s ranking on Google for his top 50 keywords. They weren’t anywhere in the top 10 results. Or even 20.
You see, the not-so-apparent reason for the ‘failed’ website was the lack of something essential for both higher search engine rankings, and to enhance the visitor experience which can convert a prospect into a customer.
What’s that, you ask?
Thomas’s new website, though visually appealing and technology-rich, was sorely lacking in a well planned information architecture and website structure.
But what is “information architecture”? And how does “website structure” differ from design?
A formal definition of “information architecture” would likely put you to sleep! So let’s simply call it the art of organizing and labeling website content, and bringing design and architecture principles to bear on it.
To understand this better, we’ll look at the skeleton of a website, shorn of flesh and skin, stripped down to the basic fundamentals of what shapes and strengthens it – from within.
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<h2>Basic Concepts Of Information Architecture</h2>
<p>In medical school, trainees begin by learning about human anatomy. Knowing what makes up the body helps understand (and later treat) diseases that affect it.</p>
<p>At the heart of understanding website structure, and planning your strategy for information architecture, lies a need to know about terms like semantic search, latent semantic indexing, knowledge graph, and SEO automation.</p>
<p><em>Semantic search</em> is an attempt to improve search accuracy by predicting the intent of a searcher. The shift from blindly matching keywords typed into a search box against a massive database, to a more “intelligent” form of search that attempts to understand what those words actually mean to the user, has serious implications on strategic SEO for many business owners.</p>
<p><em>Latent Semantic Indexing </em>is an indexing and retrieval method that was designed to identify patterns in the relationship between terms and concepts within any text.</p>
<p>By providing unique context for each search term or phrase, it ensures that a search for ‘Apple’ computers will retrieve pages with iMac or iPad on it, while a search for ‘Apple’ fruit will pull a different set of results on gardening and growing apples.</p>
<p>The <em>“knowledge graph”</em> is made up of collated information that will help search services like Google deliver more than just a list of 10 websites, and provide contextual information that solves users’ problems better (even when those problems are not explicitly voiced by the user)!</p>
<p>The implications are clear. Keywords are open to being manipulated. User intent cannot be gamed so easily.</p>
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