Optimizing Site Structure
Once you have created website content and a design concept the next important and logical step is optimizing site structure. This mainly has to do with where the files are placed, how they are named, and where they are in relation to your root or home directory.
Optimizing site structure is fairly simple and is necessary due to the way in which sites are crawled. Most search engines focus only on around 50-60 pages except for the large ones like Google that can index far more. Typically, the most important site content should be placed close to or within the root directory for priority of indexation. Additionally, most engines go two levels deep while indexing files, again Google goes further (about 4 levels), while indexing a site. This means that to encourage indexation your files should be linked from the top level pages in the root directory.
There is more to optimizing site structure than location, this also refers to size. Any site of 100 pages or more should have a well thought our structure. No more than 50 pages should appear in any one directory, and each sub section should have its own folder. This ensures that the content is well organized, located in close proximity to its counterparts, and limited in scope so that engines are encouraged to spider it.
It is wise to have a link checker when optimizing site structure as any major changes and broken links can be catastrophic leaving orphaned files.
Featured Links