Pyramid of content: logical structure of web sites (for people)
March 24, 2008 2 comments
Reading one of the books of Dan Thies, came to a chapter where he was a fair analogy interesting: the logical structure of web sites (content aimed at people, not for the search bots) can be represented by a pir â mide, and this divided, each represent an important part of the logical structure of the sites.
The very Thies gave explanations about each division, with my own words (as interpreted from the explanation), would be something more or less like this:
Home
According to Dan Thies, the home is where the majority of visitors come (or know) the majority of web sites and, although it can be done substantial work (SEO) to other pages that have a good position, with the aim of the people entering the site through them (what happens, actually), the homepage is visited by more people and more often than any other page of the site.
The "rule of thumb is that if people find what they seek (that site) from the home page, then the developer has chosen the right path, otherwise, there is much work to be done.
Categories
The second "party" is referring to categories ( "roadmap pages," as called Thies). This division of the pyramid is on the structure of p á pages (or hierarchy of directories), more specifically the way this structure is organised and, from this organization, which is easy for someone who is at the web site to find information or you want to perform a task that is necessary.
There is a myth in the area of usability on the web it preaches: "Any information on the site should be not more than 3 clicks." Actually, not quite. As cites Dan Thies (and Jacob Nielsen, also, in his book "Designing Web Usability with"), people do not care much about the number of clicks that have to make, provided that the "path" and that is simple, each click data, the proximity of the desired goal is bigger.
With this valuable information in mind, it is possible to think better in the architecture of information ç ã the site and how it can facilitate (or not…) the user experience.
"Curiosity", in view of SEO, the second part of the pyramid is formed from any page of the site that will make link to the homepage.
Content
The "Destination pages" (literally as stated in the book to describe the content of ú itself), in a typical site, are the most important, in view of the information and procedures for web sites. The navigation scheme of a "common visitors" tend to be the following:
Exemplificando with a site of e-commerce, the "roadmap pages" would be the product categories (home appliances, books, CDs, etc.) and the "destination pages" would be the descriptions of each product within one of these categories.
In a perspective of optimization for search engines, the "destination pages" would be any pages that are within 2 clicks of the homepage.
Content deep
In most web sites, have up to three levels of content (destination pages) is enough: you may have thousands of pages using this depth.
From this "limit", we need to do a job a little more elaborate (that is, different) from SEO for a proper indexing of pages that go beyond the third level of the site.
Then, according to Dan Thies that gave the opinion, only in cases where we need to really should do a site with a structure deeper than 3 levels (which are more than enough).
The "Pyramid of Content for People" makes sense, even?
Not yet finished to read the book by Dan Thies; anyway, I say that, so far, I read interesting things about SEO, who had never read on sites on the subject.
The "pyramid of content," which represents the logical structure of web sites for people, actually makes some sense. Adding the experience of the author in the area (years of work) with words and l ó logical that he used in the book, most likely this analogy of the pyramid is correct.
Hi, Tárcio!
Thanks for comment there my blog! The series vai continuarl, addressing details increasingly advanced on the theme "mythical" optimization of sites.
About the theory of Thies, prefer to say that only believe in what testo personally… :-) We need to be skeptical in this market, because there are many theoretical every corner.
For example, the story of three clicks… prefer not to comment.
About the story that the original is more visited a site, worth a big "depends". I have a website - http://www.gehspace.com - with specialized content wide, divided into more than 200 pages, all optimized for search engines individually and with campaigns to "link-building alone. As a result, over 80% of my visitors do not go through the homepage… What changes completely the logic of the hierarchical pyramid in Thies. In fact, we can explore other types of decentralized hierarchy and its possibilities of application to web development. For example, hierarchy and modular matrix. Something to talk with more time.
Querendo to chat, I can find on MSN / Yahoo in midiageh@yahoo.com.br.
Abração,
@ Alexis Kauffmann
Hello, Alexis! As vai?
Yes, boy, the content of this article was entirely based on the book of Thies. To some extent, I found quite interesting, even if only conceptually.
About give "many clicks" to the contents, already read something more interesting than Nielsen, which says that no matter the number of clicks, but the proximity to the achievement of the objectives of the visitor. Personally I prefer this! :-)
On the home page, a little more agree with the Thies. In the case of gehspace.com that is different because you, who has experience in practice with the matter, innovated and made happen this result. I believe I…
Abraços and enlarge you for the article!