Moz Q&A is closed.
After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.
How to check a website's architecture?
-
Hello everyone,
I am an SEO analyst - a good one - but I am weak in technical aspects. I do not know any programming and only a little HTML. I know this is a major weakness for an SEO so my first request to you all is to guide me how to learn HTML and some basic PHP programming.
Secondly... about the topic of this particular question - I know that a website should have a flat architecture... but I do not know how to find out if a website's architecture is flat or not, good or bad.
Please help me out on this... I would be obliged.
Eagerly awaiting your responses,
BEst Regards,
Talha
-
CodeAcademy also recently introduced free online coding classes that you can check out - it may be a good way to apply the learnings from your readings.
It takes practice and dedication - and repetition - to learn coding. You have to train yourself to properly apply the code. HTML and CSS are the best places to start, then move onto PHP
-
Thankyou Brendan
I appreciate your assistance brother
best regards,
talha
-
Hi Muhammad, I'm going to answer to the first question.
To start I suggest to read some books, where you can easily find anything you need from an expert, technical point of view. I really love books from O'reilly http://oreilly.com/css-html/index.html and from Manning http://www.manning.com/crowther2/ , but even those from Sitepoint are quite interesting http://products.sitepoint.com/ .
Then, while reading, build some website and try, try, try till the end of the days, because experience is very important in building correct html - css websites.
I don't think it's very important to learn php at the beginning, after your html books you could buy some about php.
-
Hi Muhammad,
This is in response to your second question. I would start by using a tool such as Xenu's Link Sleuth and run a report on your site. This will give you a report of how 'deep' pages are within your site ie. how far they are from your homepage.
As you might know, the general rule for most sites is to have all pages within 3 clicks of the homepage so this is a good way to judge the effectiveness of the site architecture.
Hope that helps,
Brendan.
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Should you 'noindex' Checkout Pages?
Today I was reviewing my Moz analytics and suddenly noticed 1,000 issues with pages without a meta description. I reviewed the list and learned it is 1,000 checkout pages. That's because my website has thousands of agency pages from which you can buy a product, and it reflects that difference on each version of the checkout. So, I was thinking about no-indexing (but continuing to 'follow') these checkout pages, but wondering if it has any knock-on effects I may be unaware of? Any assistance is much appreciated. Luke
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Luke_Proctor0 -
How does educational organization schema interact with Google's knowledge graph?
Hi there! I was just wondering if the granular options of the Organization schema, like Educational Organization (http://schema.org/EducationalOrganization) and CollegeOrUniversity (http://schema.org/CollegeOrUniversity) schema work the same when it comes to pulling data into the knowledge graph. I've typically always used the Organization schema for customers but was wondering if there are any drawbacks for going deep into the hierarchy of schema. Cheers 😄
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Corbec8880 -
Why do people put xml sitemaps in subfolders? Why not just the root? What's the best solution?
Just read this: "The location of a Sitemap file determines the set of URLs that can be included in that Sitemap. A Sitemap file located at http://example.com/catalog/sitemap.xml can include any URLs starting with http://example.com/catalog/ but can not include URLs starting with http://example.com/images/." here: http://www.sitemaps.org/protocol.html#location Yet surely it's better to put the sitemaps at the root so you have:
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | McTaggart
(a) http://example.com/sitemap.xml
http://example.com/sitemap-chocolatecakes.xml
http://example.com/sitemap-spongecakes.xml
and so on... OR this kind of approach -
(b) http://example/com/sitemap.xml
http://example.com/sitemap/chocolatecakes.xml and
http://example.com/sitemap/spongecakes.xml I would tend towards (a) rather than (b) - which is the best option? Also, can I keep the structure the same for sitemaps that are subcategories of other sitemaps - for example - for a subcategory of http://example.com/sitemap-chocolatecakes.xml I might create http://example.com/sitemap-chocolatecakes-cherryicing.xml - or should I add a sub folder to turn it into http://example.com/sitemap-chocolatecakes/cherryicing.xml Look forward to reading your comments - Luke0 -
One of my Friend's website Domain Authority is Reducing? What could be the reason?
Hello Guys, One of my friend's website domain authority is decreasing since they have moved their domain from HTTP to https.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Max_
There is another problem that his blog is on subfolder with HTTP.
So, can you guys please tell me how to fix this issue and also it's losing some of the rankings like 2-5 positions down. Here is website URL: myfitfuel.in/
here is the blog URL: myfitfuel.in/mffblog/0 -
Can't crawl website with Screaming frog... what is wrong?
Hello all - I've just been trying to crawl a site with Screaming Frog and can't get beyond the homepage - have done the usual stuff (turn off JS and so on) and no problems there with nav and so on- the site's other pages have indexed in Google btw. Now I'm wondering whether there's a problem with this robots.txt file, which I think may be auto-generated by Joomla (I'm not familiar with Joomla...) - are there any issues here? [just checked... and there isn't!] If the Joomla site is installed within a folder such as at e.g. www.example.com/joomla/ the robots.txt file MUST be moved to the site root at e.g. www.example.com/robots.txt AND the joomla folder name MUST be prefixed to the disallowed path, e.g. the Disallow rule for the /administrator/ folder MUST be changed to read Disallow: /joomla/administrator/ For more information about the robots.txt standard, see: http://www.robotstxt.org/orig.html For syntax checking, see: http://tool.motoricerca.info/robots-checker.phtml User-agent: *
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | McTaggart
Disallow: /administrator/
Disallow: /bin/
Disallow: /cache/
Disallow: /cli/
Disallow: /components/
Disallow: /includes/
Disallow: /installation/
Disallow: /language/
Disallow: /layouts/
Disallow: /libraries/
Disallow: /logs/
Disallow: /modules/
Disallow: /plugins/
Disallow: /tmp/0 -
Moving half my website to a new website: 301?
Good Morning! We currently have two websites which are driving all of our traffic. Our end goal is to combine the two and fold them into each other. Can I redirect the duplicate content from one domain to our main domain even though the URL's are different. Ill give an example below. (The domains are not the real domains). The CEO does not want to remove the other website entirely yet, but is willing to begin some sort of consolidation process. ABCaddiction.com is the main domain which covers everything from drug addiction to dual diagnosis treatment. ABCdualdiagnosis.com is our secondary website which covers everything as well. Can I redirect the entire drug addiction half of the website to ABCaddiction.com? With the eventual goal of moving everything together.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | HashtagHustler0 -
Why is my client's site not ranking anymore? Like big time!
Ok, I'm reaching out to all of you Moz'rs for some help with this one. My client's site has dropped off the face of google in a real short period of time. It went from page 1 (avg rank 3 to page 6 (avg rank 50) and below in the matter of 2 weeks. Here's some facts: 1. DA is a 22 and homepage PA is a 31. It outranks all other sites in its competitive set. 2. The homepage used to be the page that displays for keyword searches, now its the FAQ page, which has a lower PA of 23. Why has the home page seemingly vaporized? And, why is the FAQ showing as the first result? What should I start checking. I feel paralyzed, not sure where to start. More info: a. There are no alerts present in Webmaster Tools. b. For some reason the homepage (domain.com) was 301'd to domain.com/home.html. Domain.com is indexed by Google, however, domain.com/home.html is not. If this is the issue, what is the best way to handle it? Thanks in advance for your help!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | rhoadesjohn1 -
After reading of Google's so called "over-optimization" penalty, is there a penalty for changing title tags too frequently?
In other words, does title tag change frequency hurt SEO ? After changing my title tags, I have noticed a steep decline in impressions, but an increase in CTR and rankings. I'd like to once again change the title tags to try and regain impressions. Is there any penalty for changing title tags too often? From SEO forums online, there seems to be a bit of confusion on this subject...
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Felix_LLC0