(13)
Forums like Sphinn and WebmasterWorld are discussing one of the latest SEO interviews by Mike McDonald at WebProNews. Mike interviewed Derrick Wheeler, Microsoft's Senior SEO Architect about how to handle large scale, really large scale SEO problems.
One of the formost experts on this is Bill Hunt, so a lot of what he said reminded me of Bill's presentations. That being said, I loved one thing that Derrick said right out of the box. He said:
Structure is King:
Normally there is a war between SEOs on the topic of content vs links. Is content king or are links king when it comes to SEO? Well, as Derrick said, when it comes to huge sites, they have the content already, they have the links - it is all about structure.
By that he means, making sure the crawlers can access the content in the most efficient manner.
I won't summarize every tip he gave, but I'd highly recommend you watch the video.
Forum discussion at Sphinn and WebmasterWorld.
Comments:
Robert Cerff
12/06/2010 12:27 pm
Structure is the castle... links the queen, content king ;) Fair enough, if you have enough links then the content can be iffy. If you're wanting the whole site to perform well, then structure is key. But without a reason for anyone to return/link to nothing else really matters.
Jonathan
12/06/2010 01:51 pm
Agreed, it's probably the start of the journey, but content, keyword analysis and links all complete the story and produce an efficient site.
Megan
12/07/2010 05:50 am
hi, yes true, its only the structure that makes sense, its like the flow of links, pr and traffic via the targeted searched keywords.
Benivolent
12/07/2010 10:27 am
Absolutely true structure makes the thing in mega sites. It helps the flow of links and pr also to be increased
Umesh Yadav
12/07/2010 12:11 pm
I fully agree with you, structure makes a powerful site and content increase search. PR, Links and Content is base on Structure............. __Umesh Yadav
Richard Vaughan
12/08/2010 02:31 pm
The proper response for content that is gone is NOT a 404.. .. it is a 410.
Hafid Junaidi
12/09/2010 08:58 am
Thank's for this information.
Msweeny
12/10/2010 03:41 pm
Hello Barry - Derrick has a lot on the ball SEO-wise and Microsoft has made great strides in this area. However, I'm not sure that structure trumps content with regard to relevance calculation and search results. Content is the foundation of retrieval and determination of context. Structure is somewhat new to the party. It is a part of the puzzle along with user behavior, page layout, relationship to Authority and more. Perhaps the realm of search optimization is more of an oligarchy than monarchy?
CheetahDeals Blog
01/13/2011 01:27 pm
I agree with the premise of his argument. But I think it really does apply mostly to really big sites.
Dydacomp
01/18/2011 09:42 pm
Im going to have to agree with Robert. I still think content is the most important but after content i would say structure is the next important thing. Here at Dydacomp, we work with both small and medium businesses and based on what we are seen content has proven to be king.
Amiranda
04/04/2011 08:51 pm
I have to also agree with Robert. Content is king for SEO. You can do all the SEO in the world. Have great structure, but at the end of the day, if you do not use proper content and you content does not represent your website or even worse there is no call to action...Well then most people will leave your website immediately..Yes even if you rank #1 for a particular search phrase.
Chris Lancaster
11/12/2011 07:15 am
I have 50,000 + pages .. i think my structure is optimized but im not sure .. any place I can find tips on how to optimize or check structure?? Oahu real estate
Innavoiglopez
11/24/2011 03:39 pm
Every part discussed here are all crucial to your campaign's success. Without each of these parts done properly then all your efforts are going to be wasted. Site structure is considered as king in its own respect because without proper site structure your content won't be crawled by search engines. Of course every SEO should realize that if a page is not crawled then it wouldn't be indexed. And if a page is not indexed then it can't rank on Google. Therefore it can't be linked to. So it's still just a matter of common sense. But the hardest part of being an SEO is figuring out how to market your content, because even if you have highly linkable content, if you can't get it out to people that wants it then it's still gonna be useless.