This week, Rand discusses various methods of Content Categorization. Placing some time and effort into your info architecture can make a huge difference in both rankings and user experience. As we've said many, many times, a flat site architecture (four clicks max!) is one of the keys to getting spidered and indexed properly. Perhaps more importantly, a well-planned content layout will better enable you to control the flow of internal link juice, thereby helping to avoid keyword cannibalization and make sure your strongest pages rank for your highest value keywords.
We had a little fun with this video, hopefully you'll find our antics amusing.
(Note: I reposted the video through YouTube and it seems to be working now. -Scott)
By: Scott Willoughby
Whiteboard Friday - Content Categorization for SEO
Whiteboard Friday
The author's views are entirely his or her own (excluding the unlikely event of hypnosis) and may not always reflect the views of Moz.
Is it just me or is the video not working?
Video's working great from here - maybe a YouTube issue? It happens on occasion.
Nope, I can't see it either:"We're sorry, this video is no longer available"
Same here
"We're sorry, this video is no longer available"
Very odd - YouTube is reporting 75 views already, so there must be some discrepency in access... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q9MvWrJHLQU
Neither the version on this page or the link work for me. The version on YT just shows the loading "hourglass" thingy and goes nowhere.
Same here
There seems to be some problem with IE maybe.
I am able to view the Video in FireFox but while in IE it gives me error :"We're sorry, this video is no longer available"
But still YouTube version not showing in bothhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q9MvWrJHLQU
I'm seeing the error in firefox...
Strange enough....different places different results. What have we got here.
https://www.globusinternet.com/friday/seomoz-whiteboard.html
I see this every now and then for embedded youtube videos, a refresh fixes it almost every time.
Scott -
The Benny Hill theme music was sheer brilliance. The guys across the pond have got to love that one! Really fun video - and great content as always.
Great information and video production. Loved it.
Rand, you tend to write small letters. About 4" would be best and keep in mind that green markers don't show well. Also, press the tip of the flat side of the marker against the board and scribble a bit to get the markers primed before the presentation. Okay, a bit much. You're getting really good at teaching in front of the board. We'll have to start calling your Professor Rand. Scott, really nice work. Can't wait till next Friday.
Rand,
Memories of Benny Hill flashed in my head as I was watching this video, thanks for that!!! Next time you have to have Jane and Rebecca chase you around the room with the music playing.
Would you still recommend this approach for a blog based website?
FYI - Video didn't work from your site had to go to Youtube to view it.
Content organization is good to know but I'm more interested in this video time machine technology you're working with. I can't find it in the premium tools section.
I am really surprised with the special effects in this video. You don't have anything to envy to Hollywood. It looks like a chapter of Back to the Future with Michael J Fox.
The coveted Pat Sexton "Best use of Benny Hill music" award goes to this this video.
Long live the silo!
I do think there are ways to build a solid tag cloud architecture but it's not as easy as people think. The UTW + WP combo is probably not the way to go. I don't believe tag cloud results pages should be massively duplicated mashups of your existing content. If you are going with a tag cloud hand craft your results pages.
I also don't like completely flat navigations where you always 1 click away from any page. More and more I am seeing massive CSS dropdown navs that contain the ENTIRE site. Lose the dropdowns and don't go over 7 links in top level nav. Then create dynamic 2nd/3rd tier navs to reflect the silo you are on. I think that is an excellent way to start building strong themes.
Finally able to watch it and it was worth the wait. Great job as usual mozzers!
I'm sorry but I am no longer available to post this comment.
Darn, just when I was trying to show off SEOmoz too!
Wow Rand, you are amazing!! hehe :)
Anyway, the nice little video magic you did should probaly boost the traffic to this post.
I'd be interrested in knowing how this effected the stats.
Excellet white board Freiday, like always.
while the snazzy visual effect was funny and well-done... how would that bring more visiters to this post than say.... good content, or other factors?
Because it is both good content and funny! That makes double as many reasons to link to it.
Great video Scott and Rand. Good content, good production. I think I'm not leaving SEOmoz anytime soon.
A White Board Friday tribute to the Benny Hill Show. I like it.
If you keep progressing up the learning curve of video production White Board Studios might be the next big thing.
Worth the wait.
Great video. One of your better ones -me thinks...
A bit long for an OCD seo to be lookiing at but excellent none the less. :)
Rand,
There are lot of useful user features that can be on detail pages like e.g. user who liked this also liked this product (from Amazon) which enables DP to be linked to each other or category pages etc.
From strictly crawling perspective, this may become confusing. What do you recommend here - use nofollow or what?
And, now from link juice flow and contextual perspective, I believe that it is better to have DP linked to each other for two reasons -
a) This creates cluster of pages of similar interest e.g. user who saw nikon camera also saw canon camera, thus creating a cluster of camera pages in the view of robots and thus making all of them more relevant
b) Most of the DP are linked only from 1 page (category page) and such interlinking will increase the number of incoming links to this page and thus its chances of getting higher link juice.
What do you think ?
hehe you US guys love Benny Hill - so funny!
The best production level ever. Very nice. Sound was perfect. Video quality was stellar. Even the geeky humor and 'special effects' was a mark of what White Board Friday should be all about from one of the most authoritive sources for SEO on the planet.
SWEET!!!
Keep up the great work.
Brent D. Payne
Perhaps I was suffering from some bizarre caching issue, but I have been working from home for a few days and I only got to see this, this afternoon.
Very well put together, I enjoyed it immensely, but I would ask, why do you consider that what you refer to as the OCD archivist methodology is not suited to all sites?
Retroactive archiving is a nuisance and the ROI might not be ideal, but for new content or redesigns it seems the easiest way to maintain a grasp of keyword targeting and offers an excellent information delivery model.
Glad you enjoyed it. I, too, was very pleased with how this one turned out (once it started working so everyone could watchit).
great post thanks!
Doesn't a dynamically created XML sitemap solve the crawling issue once and for all?
I'm sitting at home trying to get rid of an obnoxious flu and thought I'd watch WF to get the old head working again. How was I supposed to know that you'd make me laugh (and make my head hurt)? You guys never do that! I'm gonna call my lawyer and see if I can sue. ^.^@%&!*&!((*.
Seriously, good content and a shame about the video not working (saw it fine btw).
It always surprises me how often people go for totally crappy architecture. From day one as a designer/developer you are told that people are not supposed to click too much (because they won't). What? They forget on day two?
I'm making this WF a must-see for new interns/employees.
Thanks for sharing your point of view on Content Categorization, it helps a lot!
Your favorite option makes me wonder about two things:
- Would you limit the number of categories / sub-categories?
- In the SEOmoz blog you have categories but the posts don't get a "categorized URL" (I mean they're all published on the SEOmoz.org/blog/ root). Is there a particular reason to do so?
BTW, great video quality improvements! Sound is radically better now with your tie-clip mic... :)
I'm now getting the "not available" message as well. Scott and I have talked and we're working on a way to get this onto either another video service (Metacafe, iFilm, etc) or re-upload to YouTube. It's very inconsistent - we are able to load it from the office in some browsers and not others... Jeff suspects YouTube might be doing some odd load-balancing that's affecting us.
Many apologies - we'll have a solution by the end of the day - I promise that the video is worth it :)
Benny Hill or Stewie's sexy time.... both work for me
Rand, great Whiteboard Friday! I'd like to see more IA ones in the future.
I would hope that most people follow the recommended content categorization that you outlined. But with blogs, most people let their CMS control everything which is the bummer.
hehe nice video rand :) and thanks for the suggestion of OCD
I think the developer should plan this before they start with coding ;)
Ah man, I can't see it either. That totally sux :(
Phenomenal production values. Great job with this, guys; as you know site architecture is one of my favorite topics to add near-instant value to client projects! :D
Worked just fine for me (US, Firefox).
Awesome piece btw. This is a topic where I certainly have room for improvement.
I'm getting a "We're sorry, this video is no longer available", in both Firefox and IE7 :(
yeah, neither video link is working for me, using Firefox
I can see it fine in the UK using Firefox
Can't get it to work either...
nice to see that bog standard ecommerce and corporate site architecture is still the best, most seo friendly way to do things after all this time :) srsly i havent changed how i do this in over 10 years!
im surprised people dont know about this... or have chosen another, more convoluted approach for the sake of 'web2.0' lolz
Great video. One of the best so far, IMO. Congrats.
And you focus in very important aspect of SEO - how sites can get better indexed, if web developers just think a bit of the right structure before they begin coding.
Thumbs up for the special effects also ;-)
Strange. Not loading on the site or on Youtube in Firefox. Just get the "twirly" hourglass thingy.
It does seem to work in Safari though. Informative video. Thanks for it.
Yup, it works in Safari.
One question: where'd you find room for the ginormous whiteboard?
I got fired.
So when are you joining Kngamurra Media
TGIF! Not only do I meet with my clients on Fridays and get paid- there is always a great video waiting for me and my coffee.
"We're sorry, this video is no longer available for you SEO addicted who lives in Brazil, no matter you try FF, IE or Mac. We are just not going to show you this incredible video with great content and special effects."
:(
Not working for me either.
Can't you just upload it again into youtube and create a different url for it? It might fix the problem.
I tried other videos on youtube, and did not have any problems.
Not working for me either. I will check back later...
I checked few other youtube videos (embedded on other sites) and saw the same problem in some cases.
Seems like a Youtube problem to me....
i want to play too! darnit i don't have a mac.
There's a version of Safari for Windows, and I was able to play the video with it.
Yet, another reason why I love my Mac! Here I've been banging my head against my PC laptop trying to play this video, when all along I could have just swiveled over to my Macbook and played the video about 2 and a half hours ago!
For the record, I've tried playing the video on PC Firefox and IE and from Youtube (both firefox and ie) directly and haven't had any success. Not sure what the issue is but I'm sure its fixable.
ryantodd
Video works for me with Firefox, unfortunately there's no sound card on my machine. I asked a co-worker to load it on his machine (with a sound card) using FireFox and it gives the not available message.
I can't see the video either, but I was relieved to see you clarify your definition of "flat site architecture". When I've seen that mentioned here before, I thought you were suggesting truly flat: every page linking to every other page, so they were all one click away. Of course, I took that to mean that you were out of your mind. It's good to see that when you say flat you mean flattish.
It's a YouTube issue, not an us issue. It seems to be totally random as to when and where it wants to work. Sorry for the inconvenience.
-Video is now reposted and should be working properly.
I see it fine :)
Enjoyed the sillyness.
Not sure if I like it more now with better production, or back when it felt like it was in a small room with a tiny whiteboard and a lamp.
Yeah, the quality is way too high Scott. Can you tone it down a bit? Perhaps use lower quality mic's and one camera. Maybe an old VHS? Also, you can add reverb by removing any furniture or carpet from the conference room!
Just goes to show ya... ;)