How was the talk "Get a scalable web architecture"

The numbers

Registered for the talk: 69 people.
Attendants: 20 people.
It was performed on September 28, 2020 by streaming due to coronavirus confinement.

Important: We remind you that in the tool Slack have a channel registered to organize and to share the management of the meetup, specifically the channel we use is #wpalicante of Slack WordPress Spain. If you want to lend a hand, contribute ideas and become more active part of this community follow the instructions on the following page-> http://wp-es.es/slack/

Get a scalable web architecture: The talk

We're coming back from our summer vacation with more enthusiasm than ever. Despite the confinement by the coronavirus COVID-19, we return to you from WPAlicante with our online talks, as we still can't see each other in the space of ULab where we usually meet.

Once again we meet via streaming. On this occasion we are joined by the following speakers Antonio Muñoz, SEO in Webcompany and web analytics specialist as well as passionate about link building. Repeat as a speaker.

He will talk to us about web architecture and how to define the best structure according to the project, making it scalable from day one by defining for it:

Internal Linking Architecture
Internal depth
URL structure

Of course, at the end of the talk we had the traditional round of questions, but unfortunately this time we had to skip the networking accompanied by refreshments for obvious reasons. The streaming was made possible thanks to our sponsors: WeglotThe WordPress Plugin to translate your website into the language of your choice. You can try it out without any obligation, as it is free to use for translating up to 2000 words into a language, and it takes up very little space on the server. And as if this wasn't enough, we have two other out of series that also sponsor us: the great gamification plugin for your WordPress GamiPresswhich simplifies the whole world of gamification so that you can include it in your WordPress in a simple and cool way and Company Web a specialized WordPress hosting, among other services, with several plans available to suit your needs.

Here are some points that we found interesting, although we include them at the end of this entry The full video of the presentationThis time it was streamed and recorded to be posted on Youtube. We also link you to the presentation he used to develop the talk on scalable web architecture .

Fundamentals: What is web architecture

It is the hierarchization of the information of our web regarding the user, as well as Google.

There are three factors involved in web architecture:

Architecture of the informationHow do we plan the website so that our objective is fulfilled, that is to say, the different titles (H1, H2, H3...), images, if we have any corporate table or graphic, calls to action, etc.
Architecture of linked toHow we connect our URLs, through which links, how many clicks the user has to make to get where he wants to go...
Architecture URLHow we define our addresses for each page, whether it includes domain, category, author, date...

There is no such thing as a perfect architecture, in the end there are several pieces whose combination will help us achieve our goal.

Information architecture

H1We present the general information that will be given both to the user and to the bot from Google.

H2 And H3The following are complements to the H1. You have to be careful because you have to think not only of the end user but also of Google. We must add semantics that help Google to know the content of our website. It wouldn't be worth, for example, adding an H3 that was "What else do you need" pq maybe the user does but Google doesn't get anything out of it, since it's too generic a phrase that doesn't make it clear by itself what you're talking about.

It should be used both to sort content and to attack related keywords. It should never be used to style a specific phrase. There are other methods to apply style or to draw attention to it:

WordPress plugins: there are plugins for styling like TinyMCE Advanced
Gutenberg: allows to modify the typography and give style without the need of additional plugins.
HTML: <p style=»font-size:18px;»>Texto</p>
- You can use this tag to add formatting to a text.

Linking Architecture

When we talk about web architecture, we almost always refer to the link architecture, although in reality we have to take into account the three levels we are talking about here.

There are three types of links:

VerticalThe following is a list of the levels: All are levels, and in each one a Long Tail different and more specific. We arranged the information vertically and made it very clear to Google the structure of the information.
HorizontalEverything is linked from the home page. At most there is a level 2. On one level we have all the information.
ClusterThe combination of the two previous ones. It is normally used for multi-thematic websites. Thus, we will have as many horizontal lines as different topics are treated and each one of them will have vertically all the information organized.

There is no perfect link architecture, each website has specific content and requires a specific architecture. The ideal would be to be able to do something similar to Wikipedia, where there are no specific patterns and each link is free and only conditioned by the need to relate the information. If we condition ourselves to make a vertical architecture just so that Google understands it very well but for the user it is uncomfortable and you are going to lose sales, it is not a good strategy. You have to find a balance between the need for SEO and the improvement of the Business.

For example, if we have a local locksmith shop, it wouldn't make sense to add an article on how to remove spam from a website just because that article will bring us a lot of traffic. If we do that, we're distorting the meaning of our website and we're attracting traffic that has nothing to do with our locksmith theme.

The reasons for linking to a product would be:

Accessibility (UX and SEO): A user or bot you must be able to access the URL from the Home.
Objective (Business): if we want that product to be sold or to have a lot of visibility, or to be accessed from certain parts of the web.
Naturalize that URL (SEO): the links must be in accordance with the contents. There is no point in linking a post explaining how to manage Facebook if what we want is to sell gaming computers, for example, even if that topic is going to have many visits.
Transmit authority (SEO): This is the only point where you can force the issue a little, provided that we have fulfilled the three points above. For example, add a banner with a product that has nothing to do with the category we are in. It could be because the business objective is a hot product and although it is not related to our category, it does attract a lot of traffic and we meet our business objective. It is better to put this type of link at the end, where it does not break the natural structure too much.

If the following reasons are given, and more if they are all given, it is more than enough reason not to link to a product:

No accessibility (UX and SEO)
Does not meet target (Business)
Does not convey authority (SEO)
It's not natural (SEO)

On a theoretical level, we show two possible examples of linkage architecture:

An example, on a practical level, of how information is correctly presented, for an eCommerce, would be the pcComponents website. They are very similar to those of Amazon, Carrefour, El Corte Inglés...

URL Architecture

So far, the URL has always been sought to be friendly. However, there are several ways to achieve this taking into account other factors:

/nombre-url/
/category/name-url/
/date-url/name-url/
/category/date-url/name-url/

It is up to the project to determine which URL architecture to choose, depending on our objectives. For example, for a newspaper it makes sense to add a date after the category, while for an eCommerce it may make sense to add the identification of each seller after the category so that we can then analyze for each seller what traffic they have.

The information can be obtained from different tools. All of them can be used as long as we configure our URL architecture well. It's also important that this is done from the beginning because otherwise it will affect the SEO even if redirects are made:

AhrefsWordPress: You can take the WordPress category and as long as you have it configured as a prefix, you can see the reference domains, the positioned keywords, as well as the organic traffic.
Data Studio.
Screaming frogURLs: It is interesting because you can include certain URLs or exclude them, especially for large sites where there are thousands of URLs. You can also include path levels to analyze, for example, a level 1 that is a category and a level 2 that is the year from which we started the analysis. This is also how we narrow down the review for large sites.
Search Console.

It is interesting to have a defined URL architecture from the beginning.

Most common errors in web architecture

Elementary and H1Elementary: Elementary allows you to play with the H1s and customize the default WordPress. The problem is that it doesn't remove it but hides it with a class, but Google still finds it in the code. This causes problems.
Load by Ajax and "See more" buttonScrolling: It may happen that when scrolling more products appear or when clicking a button it shows another product page. As Google does not scroll or press buttons, not all articles will be positioned. If we want the products to be positioned just like that, it is better that there is no pagination so that Google finds them all.
URL not linked but trackedWe can make the mistake of simply not linking a URL so that Google won't find it, because at the moment we are not interested. The fact is that Google has different crawling modes, regardless of whether it is linked directly or not, for example, whether it is in the Sitemap or has a backlink from another external site. So even if we don't link to it, Google may still crawl it. When we tell txt not to crawl it, we're really saying that it won't analyze the content, but it will find it anyway.
Google always crawls from homeIn 90% of the cases it is like that, and when Google starts to crawl it does it from the Home. But it's not always like that. For example, if we have a static website that never varies with a blog section that contains interesting information that we update every day, Google will end up crawling more of the blog than our Home. In the end, tracking depends on how old each area of the site is and how well we maintain it.
Merging content that competes for a keywordNormally this type of problem comes from the architecture, because Google is not clear that one is a 6 and another is a 8. To solve it, many links could be generated to both elements, clearly indicating that some are 6 and others are 8. Merging content makes the content very dirty and spoils the architecture.

Final networking questions and issues

QUESTIONWhat plugin would you recommend for making permalink changes in WordPress?

RESPONSECustom Permalink : Custom Permalink is the one I usually use. For most websites it solves the problem. In some cases with WooCommerce you have to get your hands on it to avoid mistakes.

QUESTIONHow do you plan the web architecture tree? Is it better to use paper and pencil or with experience you can write it down?

RESPONSEI'm very much a paper person. I sit down with the client and analyze... There are some tools to make a web map Octupus map, which is free and allows you to comfortably draw the architecture. It can be uncomfortable for very large websites, as visually it is difficult to define complete.

QUESTIONWhen using level H1 headers, how do you manage the use of sliders on the pages? That is, sometimes the page title is shown by the main slide, but many slider plugins do not use the H1 tag for "main text".

RESPONSEThe first slider would be the H1 and for me it would be the most important. The rest of the sliders would have the H2. But I also say that I don't like to use sliders. If the plugin itself doesn't use the H1 for the main text, the plugin would have to be modified. The problem with this is that when you update the plugin all your changes will be lost, so you would have to have a child plugin or something similar.

QUESTIONSome other example of a web with an interesting architecture to take an example?

RESPONSEFor a medium sized architecture, that of Pc Components that I've already mentioned. For a smaller architecture, Dosfarma can be a good example.

Glossary

Long TailSearch term: A search term on our website by which we want to position ourselves and which is more specific than a keyword. For example, "computer" could be a keyword for a website selling computer components, and "powerful computer for gaming" could be a long tail.
BotThe software is designed to perform repetitive tasks over the Internet by communicating with the user, i.e. imitating human behavior. They are usually used to give information to the user or to provide some kind of basic help.
Hot ProductThe "new": It is the one that has a high volume of rotation, sales, offers or because it is very new and therefore sells a lot. This type of product can appear in banners on pages that may not be related to it, but at the business level it is a strategy that works for its sale.
UXThe acronym is Ubeing andXperience, which means User Experience in English. It includes all those techniques and tools that improve the user's opinion of a website because it is intuitive, easy and pleasant to navigate, understandable...