The purpose of this document is to provide an easy- to-understand guide to website architecture, basic design guidelines and ecommerce SEO tips.

1. Website Architecture,
Design & Migration
Guide
Sankar Ponnusamy, Priceline.com, Jan-2015
Introduction
The purpose of this document is to provide an easy-
to-understand guide to website architecture, basic
design guidelines and ecommerce SEO tips.
Basic SEO Guidelines For Web Developers
• Make pages primarily for users not for search
engines - Google
• Make site with a clear hierarchy and links.
Every page should be reachable from at
least one static text link. HTML sitemap
(consists of hierarchical listings of the pages)
can be used to display the structure of the
site. HTML Sitemap is usually placed on
the footer so that the very deepest level of
content is reachable to the crawler within 3-4
clicks, effectively flattening the site architecture.
Nordstrom, has a well-optimized HTML sitemap.
Brand pages are hierarchically organized in
alphabetical order
• Use Keywords to create descriptive, human
friendly URL Structure If the content is ac-
cessible throughout multiple ways implement
a 301 redirect or rel=”canonical” attribute on
the duplicate URL(s).
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2. • What happens when a user removes part of
a URL? prepare site to show content in such
situations or have a custom 404 page with
links to other pages they might want to go
to. In the below example removing ”table-
lamps” from the url will take users to ”furniture”
category.https://www.1stdibs.com/locations/new-
york-usa/furniture/lighting/table-lamps/
• Ensure breadcrumb navigation is present.
• Apply the following best practice on page tem-
plates: unique title, unique description, unique
H1’s & Optimised alt tags
• Notify Google of mobile sites.
• Pay attention to product (Hotel Property) URLs
Refer section 1.2
• Google is no longer indexing and ranking tabbed
or click to expand contents. Here is an examples
of tabbed content from a major e-commerce site,
which could be avoided. (**comment added
June 2015, p.s refer to recent Google guidelines,
as there is some changes on tabbed content)
Best Practice: Amazon display most of the user
generated content directly on the page, making
the user scroll to the end to see the content.
• Use schema markups and social media Open
graph protocols in the page template.
URL Structure Best Practices
Basics of A Good URL Structure
Fundamental success of a site and its seo depends
on the URL structure. It is a common practice for
ecommerce websites to logically organize its pages
into categories, sub-categories and product level
pages. Example:
Root: www.example.com
Category page: www.example.com/category-
name
Sub-category: www.example.com/category-
name/sub-category-name
Product page: Requires different approach.
*discussed under Product URL Structure section
below*
Categories and sub-categories are the most impor-
tant pages of the site and thus, will be targeting
important keyword terms.
Another popular way of site architec-
ture is to show the full user path: Ex-
amples: 1stdibs.com/locations/new-york-
usa/furniture/lighting/
homeaway.com/vacation-rentals/new-york/upstate-
new-york/r413
Product URL Structure
Product pages are different from category pages.
These pages need a special consideration, as same
product can exist in multiple categories creating
duplicate content issues.
For Example: ”Pink Nike Women’s Torch”
can exist in the following two categories
www.example.com/women/shoes/pink-nike-
womens-torch or www.example.com/nike/pink-nike-
womens-torch
Another example: ”Sumner Hotel” in Brooklyn
area can exist in Brooklyn or Downtown Brooklyn
or Bronx category pages then we could end
up with 3 urls serving the same content.
www.example.com/hotels/brooklyn/sumner-hotels
www.example.com/hotels/bronx/sumner-hotels
www.example.com/hotels/downtown-
brooklyn/sumner-hotels
In this scenario, it’s best to use canonical tags,
explained in section below
Recommended Ways Of Combating This
One URL per product coming directly from the root
level
www.example.com/sumner-hotels-brooklyn
or
www.example.com/pink-nike-womens-torch
One URL per product coming from category page
www.example.com/hotels/sumner-hotels-brooklyn
or
www.example.com/product/pink-nike-womens-
torch
Regardless of which path the user takes to the
product page, the breadcrumb could still show
the path they took to aid user experience, i.e.
breadcrumb will be
home>hotels>us>brooklyn>sumner-hotels
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3. home>hotels>us>bronx>sumner-hotels
home>hotels>us>downtown-brooklyn>sumner-
hotels respectively.
Site Migration Guidelines:
What exactly is going to change in the redesign?
• Is there any front-end design changes associated
with the migration?
• What about code base? Is it going to change ?
• Focus on information architecture and/or page
URL Structure. URL structure change requires
a proper 301 redirect strategy.
• Content: Migrate most of the content from the
legacy site to its equivalent new counter part.
For instance, /old-page-abc may have valuable
text content which could be transfered over to
/new-page-abc
• Internal Links: Maintain legacy sites internal
linking structure.
With a change this big, temporary rankings and
traffic declines are likely. keeping this in mind,
elect a best time for the migration to happen.
Migration Process
Collect Data And Establish SEO Baselines
Step 1. Crawl the existing legacy site to generate
a list of URLs that can be used to test redirects
if/when the URL format changes.
Step 2. A crawl of all the external backlinks will
generate a list of linked URLs.
Step 3. A crawl of the new website on a staging
environment can be compared to the live website.
The reports will highlight any technical issues with
the new website in addition to highlighting any
changes in the site architecture.
Step 4: Launch and post-migration Monitoring.
After the big day, it is important to monitor Googles
crawl and organic traffic.
New Site Development
Block Crawler access:
Make sure that the test environment is not accessible
to search bots.
• Block the test dev via robots.txt
Add the following code on robots.txt:
User−Agent : ∗Disallow : /Test−server−name
• Remember, search engines can still crawl the
site and possibly index the new URLS. So,
password protect the test environment or only
allow access to certain IP ranges.
• As a third layer protection, add meta robots
noindex to all pages.
metaname = ”robots”content = ”noindex”
Duplicate Content Issues
Duplicate content issues should be identified and
resolved as early as possible. Common cases includes:
1. Internal search generating duplicate pages under
different URLs.
2. URLs with added parameters after the ?
character. (URL parameters such as click tracking
and some analytics code can cause duplicate content
issues).
3. Directories with and without a trailing slash
example: priceline.com/hotels should be redirected
to priceline.com/hotels/
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4. Page by Page 301 Mapping
This is the heart of our migration progress from an
SEO standpoint. Make sure legacy site pages 301
redirect to their newer counterparts.
Assuming the new URL Structure to reflects
the path user took: prieline.com/hotels/us/new-
york/brooklyn
Here is the page by page url mapping looks like
Example: Mayoclinic.com moved to the .org TLD in
Jan 2014. Here is the redirect path
Crawling And Comparing Test vs
Live Site, using Deepcrawl
Using DeepCrawl (a 3rd party site crawler) crawl
the new development environment and compare it
with the legacy site. Make sure there is no difference
in data between the development and the live site.
Such difference will impact SEO rankings. Make
sure the internal linking structure remains the same.
Figure below, illustrates Example dash-
baord comparing live vs test site:
Handling XML Sitemaps:
Generate New XML sitemaps containing new pages.
Submit new XML sitemaps to Google & Bing via
Webmaster tools
Keep old XML sitemap to track indexed pages,
expected to decrease
Site Goes Live: Checklists
Make sure 301 redirects work
Check webmaster tools for other source code errors.
Monitor webmaster tools or crawl errors such as 404,
soft 404, 302 etc.
Make sure the analytics code installed on all pages
and tracking.
Make sure PPC container tags & other affiliates tags
are installed.
Monitor changes in organic rankings, traffic and con-
versions
1 Reference
http://www.smartinsights.com/search-engine-
optimisation-seo/seo-content-strategy/five-seo-
tips-for-product-pages-on-ecommerce-websites/
http://us.searchlaboratory.com/blog/2012/10/basic-
site-structure-click-depth-for-seo/
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5. http://moz.com/blog/the-web-
developers-seo-cheat-sheet-2013-edition
http://builtvisible.com/solving-site-architecture-
issues/ http://www.bruceclay.com/seo/silo.htm
https://developers.google.com/apis
deepcrawl.co.uk/use-cases/site-
redevelopment http://builtvisible.com/wp-
content/uploads/2010/10/A4uExpo-Architecture-
Richard-Baxter.pdf// image source: DeepCrawl.com
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