Information Architecture and SEO Silos
Simply put, information architecture (IA) is the organization of information. What happens when you mix this with search engine optimization and silos? For those not familiar with silos, I recommend visiting Bruce Clay’s web site.
The short and dirty version is this: Siloing is a method that SEO professionals use on web sites to rank better with search engines. This method has been proven to work in the past to significantly increase page relevance and rankings. When you group like content that is similar in theme, you are creating a silo. The downside to this is that if you crosslink between silos of different themes you are diluting the silo.
When it comes to creating an information architecture for a web site, using silos can be quite daunting if you’re not familiar with how they work. I’m currently working on a project where it has been requested that I port some content over to the silo structure.
Here are the issues that I foresee:
- Moving Content — moving content to another location and renaming the files is an SEO nightmare. Even if you do perform 301 redirects, you’re still going to lose some of the link juice that went along with the original page.
- URL Structure — for SEO purposes you want to place keywords that people are searching for in the URL string. In this situation it makes the URL’s extremely long.
A solution to the second bullet point above is simply to shorten the naming conventions in the URL string while maintaining some form of keyword structure. Google (and maybe other search engines) use a technology called LSI or Latent Semantic Indexing. LSI is where the search engines group together information that share similarities. In other words, a relationship is created between information. Instead of focusing primarily on page names and URL structures, pay closer attention to the content within the page.
Although SEO silos have been proven to be a great method to rank well, I’m concerned with creating a great user experience first which means usability is on the top of my list. Creating an information architecture that is effective and easy to understand by the end-user is key in any design.
My knowledge is limited when it comes to SEO silos. This is why I’d like to hear from other professionals that have experience with them. Looking forward to your comments.
