Most web presence developers know by now that WordPress is “SEO friendly” by design. But take note – this attribute doesn’t compensate for code heavy page builders that kill site speed and dilute relevance with massive overhead.
Assuming you’ve abandoned Visual Composer and similar code-heavy page design Hindenburgs, we can move on to the “SEO friendly by design” topic, and uncover why the statement is true – and how to preserve it in your site.
First and foremost, search engine algorithms up rank good “categorization logic”. In other words, if your file and folder structure is logical … that’s a good thing. For example, if you sell tennis shoes (among other things) your path to a page with Nike tennis shoes might look like this:
www.allkindsastuff.com/shoes/tennis-shoes/nike/
And assuming that page has a bunch of Nike tennis shoes on it, you have satisfied the search algo criterion of good categorization logic. The algo reads your folder structure and determines that it follows a narrowing funnel from broad to specific. If those folders contain a default page (index) that delineates sub-folders logically (e.g. the “tennis-shoes” folder has a default page with the 20 brands you carry, images, alt tags and links to each brand) you score extra points for “search-ability”.
In fact, when you are on the Nike page, the URL in your browser address bar should match your site’s menu structure such that the line above appears on that page (“allkindsastuff.com” might be simply be “home”) with links to each folder. You should be able to click on “tennis-shoes” and that should take you directly to the default page described above. Similarly, you should be able to click on “shoes” and see the types of shoes sold with links to each type.
Your tennis shoes could be categorized by brand, and the Nike page could have Nike running shoes, and hiking shoes further categorized on that page. Or, you could have types, categorized by brands on that page – whatever makes logical sense. But the key here is, organization and structure which makes a specific search executable.
That’s categorization. WordPress enables good categorization inherently in its post structure (editable of course). And a number of minimal overhead page builders allow your page structure to follow a similar logic. Remember, search engines are designed to make a specific search executable, and to the extent that your website helps that process along, your website will be ranked higher than those who generally seem disorganized or poorly thought out.
Google Adwords made a change a few years ago that allows an ad to simulate a logical folder structure, even when your final URL doesn’t match. In the (redacted) example of the expandable image above, you can see that a page: “available-properties.php” is located in the root domain folder. But for our Alaska ad group, we want to associate the page with alaska/land-for-sale.
Had the site designers properly categorized the site there would be separate folders for Alaska, Montana and California (The 3 states where properties are listed) but since there are not, we can simulate a more optimal structure in Adwords (of course this is just a theoretical example – but real life examples like this are common).
Why does Adwords do this? There are several reasons offered, but one obvious reason is that search demand marketers will often be hired to market a site they did not design. This helps to overcome sub-optimal design structure just a bit. It also visually ques prospects to a folder structure logic they may (by now) be used to seeing when using well categorized sites over time.
Again, the key to SEM (as with SEO) is good content that is well organized and easy to find. Search engines make it easy to find a well optimized site, and a well optimized site makes it easy to find what you’re searching for. These elements go hand in hand, working together to create the best experience.
When you have good categorization, it helps the search engines to help you … to connect with your customers … by making what they are searching for easy to find.