Information Architecture, Landing Pages and Search Optimization

May 24th, 2007 by Martin Edic

Aaron Wall’s SEObook has a post today on the importance of how you organize the pages on a site relative to the site’s ability to be indexed by search engines. This tracks well with some things I’ve been observing while trying to get search marketing (PPC) campaigns to work with larger corporate sites that pre-exist those campaigns. Here’s an example:

• XYZ Corp comes to us with a new product that they want to promote online to generate qualified sales leads
• Their site, XYZ.com, has been around for a long time (in web years) and has grown organically far beyond any well-planned site architecture. Pages have been added here and there, sub-sites stuck on as new products were introduced, various old pages that are outdated are still accessible, etc. It’s an overgrown weed driven by the corporate imperative that everything on the web fall under the primary branded site. This is a common situation.
• We want to promote the new product via natural/organic search results and with pay-per-click search marketing. The desired conversion is a request for a white paper with a certain amount of visitor information provided and an opt-in option to be contacted. This conversion defines the desired ‘lead’.
• A new Product section of the site is planned, keyword research is completed and the new area is optimized with good descriptive content, page titles, alt tags, etc. PR sends out a new product release that generates some authoritative inbound links from other sites. Everything is hunky dory from a SEO perspective.

Or is it?

Our keywords aren’t just relevant to this product area, they relate to other products and services of XYZ Corp. So searchers who want to know about our new product may get directed to other, older parts of the corporate site that have higher PageRanks due to more inbound links, age, etc. Our pay per click ads will get them to the new Product area but, because the older site has been around longer (as has its competition), we’re going to have to bid up a lot to get where we want to on the results page. We may even be competing against ourselves.

The problem here is that we don’t want our visitors to get to the corporate site. It is confusing and it may not be easy to find our new product area. Any required extra clicks dramatically reduce the likelihood of a conversion.

So how do we fix this? A landing page? Redesign the whole parent site? Get a unique URL and build a new site? None of these options are attractive in the long run.

The answer is that large sites should be built on strategically planned site architecture, architecture that can expand without breaking the natural navigation and information flow of the site as new pages are added. By spending time planning this critical aspect of the site and establishing ground rules for upgrading the site, many of the problems in this example can be avoided. That’s why we spend a lot of time upfront on planning when we design new sites- Great information architecture guarantees a site that will enhance your business model for years to come.

This entry was posted by Martin Edic on Thursday, May 24th, 2007 and is filed under Development, Google, Public Relations, SEM, SEO, Uncategorized, User Experience. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.