At last weeks A4uExpo, I gave a presentation on successful site architecture. There was so much to cover in 45 minutes, with topics ranging from site architecture design and mapping keyword strategy, to the more technical aspects of site construction, internal link strategy and on page factors. One area that I got a lot of feedback on was the topic of category page optimisation.

I was very glad to catch the founder of SEO Gadget presenting what I think he is an authority on, Site Architectures. You will see why when you scroll down to the resources part of this presentation. Suffice to say, he has dealt with some heavy weight site structures and is no stranger to the optimisation and manipulations of these for a businesses optimal benefit.

Richard Baxter’s presentations are always very well researched and delivered. In the session on Successful Information Architecture at the A4ULondon Expo 2010, Richard took us on a very detailed journey of understanding, developing, refining and optimising a sites architecture to maximise for SEO potential, yet keep it very user rich and friendly. In fact a couple of his ideas in my opinion would instantly see an increase in conversion. instead of trying to cover the presentation verbatim, I will pull out a couple of key messages which I think one should definately take away over and above the full presentation.  (I will highlight these as “Protips“).

All too often, internal marketing teams or “the tech guys” at any given company think they know exactly what’s best for a website’s SEO strategy. This developer mindset is based on a view that’s considered programmatically correct. It’s quite often the way things have always been done, and continue to be done; “search” is given little value, as it’s attributed to being a marketing function.

For example, many developers are of the opinion that changing a site’s structure—adding in new content pages, editing title tags, and so on—makes no difference.

The amount of code that developers encounter regularly is staggering. At any one time, a single site can make use of over five different web languages (i.e. MySQL, PHP, JavaScript, CSS, HTML).

There are a number of lesser-known and underused ways to enhance your site with a few simple but powerful files. This article aims to highlight five of these unsung heroes that can assist your site. They’re pretty easy to use and understand, and thus, can be great additions to the websites you deploy or currently run.

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