This article will explore the basic concepts of designing optimized site architectures for efficient spidering by search engines. Building an easily spidered site has ramifications in how pages, sections of a site, and entire domains are topically understood and categorized by bots, which influences indexing and rankings.

While search engine optimization concerns are the focus here, there are many different applications of information architecture (IA) that go beyond search engines. IA overlaps with several other disciplines, including navigability, user experience, and interface design. It’s very hard to speak categorically about this subject, because how IA is applied to a site is based largely on business goals, the site infrastructure, user testing, and the whims of the people involved (for real).

At its …

Words matter. Words are images, descriptions, and labels. Words convey meaning and nuance; words are symbols. Words are inextricably tied to culture and society. Words can even become an extension of our personal identities.

Words matter. So why do the words that describe internet marketing suck so bad?

This article explores the reputation problem the search engine optimization industry faces because of shortcomings in the language used to describe it. This is a difficult topic, and probably too theoretical for some. But since my last post on the Fundamentals of Link Building was so practical, I thought I should balance that out.

One footnote: you’ll notice throughout this article, I use a variety of terms interchangeably to describe internet marketing. Yes, I …

The following post was inspired by a presentation I did at Searchfest earlier this month. Since this blog is new, I’ll be posting articles on fundamental marketing concepts that we can use as reference points on the site. This is the first in a series of posts along the theme of Internet Marketing Fundamentals…

The Fundamentals of Building Links

There is a golden rule to link building: links reflect value on the web. Remember that rule, because we’ll come to it later.

Right now, let’s expand that rule with two important definitions:

1. Linking is a communication and citation signal inherent to the web. Links reflect contribution, value, relevance and influence. If you want a scalable solution for building high-quality links, then …

Is there an interchange between search engine optimization (more accurately, internet marketing) and usability? That’s the question veteran SEO Grant Crowell asked Jared Spool, a veteran usability engineer, in a twenty minute phone interview.

Grant Crowell of Grantastic Designs enaged Jared Spool on the topic in late November of 2007, and shared it with the LED Digest this week. The topic at hand was the interchange between search and usability. Grant highlights the major content of the talk in his post to the LED Digest, which is well worth a read.

After listening to the podcast (directly below these comments), here are my thoughts:

Spool doesn’t feel there’s any issue here, in terms of search versus usability. I tend to …

 

 Grant Crowell and Jared Spool on SEO and Usability [18:00m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

The Register recently ran an article outlining some critical issues with Adwords. I was quoted in the article, along with Andrew Goodman, Dan Thies, Aaron Wall and others. I thought it was fairly balanced and well-researched. I want to make clear that while I don’t consider Google an “evil” company in any sense, I recognize that without sound consultation or education about the Adwords network, advertisers can bleed money by using it.

The article above does a good job of outlining the issues. To summarize, here are the major problems with Adwords that every advertiser needs to get a handle on:

Automatic Matching

What it does: uses Google’s proprietary technology to match your keywords to related terms.

Why worry: broad …