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How A Web Company Approaches Large Website Architecture
- By Aaron Wittersheim
- Published Sunday 15th 2009
- Internet Marketing
- Unrated
Aaron Wittersheim
Aaron Wittersheim writes informative articles for Whoast, a Chicago web company. They help clients by designing attractive sites that are perfectly suited for SEO and PPC. As a website company, Chicago, they work to increase their clients' traffic and improve their ROI.
View all articles by Aaron Wittersheim
If you have a small website with only a few pages, you don't have too much flexibility when it comes to its structure. The home page usually links to every page and it's very simple. However, the structure of a large site can become difficult. It's common for active sites to include thousands of pages, especially with the use of data feeds, user generated content, and multiple contributors.
Poorly planned site architecture can harm the business of a web company as it leads to less exposure, low traffic, and frustrated visitors. This article describes the best approach to structuring a large site so the search engines can index it and visitors can enjoy it.
Being Search Engine Friendly
The search engines can only index pages that are linked to other indexed pages. If your site has fewer than ten pages, it's simple to build a structure that can be crawled by the search engine spiders. The hard part is making the architecture manageable when you have hundreds or thousands of pages.
A spider can crawl a large website and find each file without understanding the structure. The problem is the spiders crawl depending on how frequently your website is updated. For example, forums and blogs that are updated frequently are more likely to be crawled than a site rarely updated or that is data feed driven.
Additionally, even if the spiders crawl your site, not having an easy to navigate structure can frustrate the visitors to your website. The solution is having your web company design your architecture so it leaves
a trail.
Following The Trail
By integrating a trail into a site, the search engines and visitors have an architectural trail to follow. However, this trail created by a website company still needs a structure within itself.
For example, consider an online store that sells DVDs. The web company cannot link to each individual DVD from the home page. However, they can build a structure that supports categories on a second level like "classic movies," "action adventure," "comedy," "new releases," etc. The website company may also further split the categories into sub categories so visitors have an even easier way to find the page they want. An easy to navigate structure may look like the following.
Home - DVDs - Television - Science Fiction & Fantasy - Xena: Warrior Princess
A web company should develop an architecture relying on sub categories for a large website for two reasons. First, all sub categories leave a trail for the search engine spiders while preventing the occurrence of pages without incoming links. Second, it provides visitors with an intuitive and easy to navigate experience.
A professional website company can review the existing size and structure of your site and can help you rework it to accomplish your goals. While it is vital to create an intuitive architecture for large sites, a successful site also identifies the needs for front end functionality, back end applications, and a visual appeal that achieves many goals. An expert Chicago web company, or a proficient company anywhere, can help you develop your site into an attractive, powerful, and structurally sound site that produces results.
Poorly planned site architecture can harm the business of a web company as it leads to less exposure, low traffic, and frustrated visitors. This article describes the best approach to structuring a large site so the search engines can index it and visitors can enjoy it.
Being Search Engine Friendly
The search engines can only index pages that are linked to other indexed pages. If your site has fewer than ten pages, it's simple to build a structure that can be crawled by the search engine spiders. The hard part is making the architecture manageable when you have hundreds or thousands of pages.
A spider can crawl a large website and find each file without understanding the structure. The problem is the spiders crawl depending on how frequently your website is updated. For example, forums and blogs that are updated frequently are more likely to be crawled than a site rarely updated or that is data feed driven.
Additionally, even if the spiders crawl your site, not having an easy to navigate structure can frustrate the visitors to your website. The solution is having your web company design your architecture so it leaves
Following The Trail
By integrating a trail into a site, the search engines and visitors have an architectural trail to follow. However, this trail created by a website company still needs a structure within itself.
For example, consider an online store that sells DVDs. The web company cannot link to each individual DVD from the home page. However, they can build a structure that supports categories on a second level like "classic movies," "action adventure," "comedy," "new releases," etc. The website company may also further split the categories into sub categories so visitors have an even easier way to find the page they want. An easy to navigate structure may look like the following.
Home - DVDs - Television - Science Fiction & Fantasy - Xena: Warrior Princess
A web company should develop an architecture relying on sub categories for a large website for two reasons. First, all sub categories leave a trail for the search engine spiders while preventing the occurrence of pages without incoming links. Second, it provides visitors with an intuitive and easy to navigate experience.
A professional website company can review the existing size and structure of your site and can help you rework it to accomplish your goals. While it is vital to create an intuitive architecture for large sites, a successful site also identifies the needs for front end functionality, back end applications, and a visual appeal that achieves many goals. An expert Chicago web company, or a proficient company anywhere, can help you develop your site into an attractive, powerful, and structurally sound site that produces results.
