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July 29th, 2009Ascending the Pyramid: Building a successful SEO campaign
June 12th, 2009Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is a set of techniques and strategies for building a website (or modifying an existing one) such that its pages will appear in the top, natural results of search engines such as Google, Yahoo or MSN, for relevant key phrases. If your website sells toy fire trucks, then, an SEO campaign might focus upon getting your website to rank #1 whenever you type “toy fire trucks” in a search engine.
Don’t you have to pay for that?
Yes and no. SEO does not refer to paid listings, sometimes called “Sponsored Links,” which usually appear in a designated section of the search results page. In those cases, the more you pay the more prominently your ad will appear. It is certainly one way to promote your website, and it is a strategy that has been successful for many people. However, this is entirely different from SEO.
SEO refers to the natural results, in which the search engine has ranked web pages according to relevancy. When you type “toy fire trucks,” into Google, about six million results are returned. The first page has ten natural listings. The first web page that appears is one that Google’s complex ranking algorithm has determined to be the most relevant for that phrase. The second result is the second most relevant, and so on.
Relevancy is determined by many factors, some known and others still kept secret by the engineers at Google and other companies. The two most important factors, however, are content and back-links. Web site content is the actual “text,” or written material that composes the pages of your website. Back-links are all of the instances in which another website links to yours.
So how do I make my website #1 in the natural results?
SEO is not easy. Gaining a high ranking in the search engines is a long process that requires intense commitment and patience. No matter what the nature of the product or servce you are offering, the chances are good that there is a lot of competition out there. My personal rule of thumb is, if you want to rank #1, you must be #1. If you want to rank #1 for lawn mowers, writing one page or even fifty pages about lawn mowers, using all the right phrases with the correct “word density ratio” may not be sufficient to gain that ranking . You must, quite simply, make your website the most relevant, informative and entertaining on the web for that search phrase.
If you want to rank for “lawn mowers,” you had better be prepared to “write the book” on lawn mowers, research everything you possibly can about the subject, the history as well as the future, and build a large following of people who agree that, when it comes to “lawn mowers,” your website says it all.
Building a successful SEO campaign.
Having said this, attaining a high ranking for whatever search phrases best describe your website is a worthwhile goal, and one that will require planning and some method by which your progress can be measured. The one devised by informationarchitech for our clients (as well as our own websites) is called the “Key Term Pyramid.”
To develop a “key term pyramid,” and mark your progress, you are going to need two important tools that are staples of the SEO trade.
The first is a key term search tool. These are usually online programs that allow you to search the databases, or portions of the databases, used by major search engines that contain information about the phrases users are actually entering into the search boxes of Google, Yahoo or MSN. For example, if you enter “toy truck” into the Overture Inventory Keyword Selecto Tool, you might see the following results:
| Searches done in June 2006 | |
|---|---|
| Count | Search Term |
| 5985 | truck toy |
| 1601 | toy fire truck |
| 833 | toy garbage truck |
| 722 | hess toy truck |
| 479 | monster truck toy |
| 390 | toy dump truck |
| 353 | collectible toy truck |
These results give you some idea of the terms people are actually using when searching for toy fire trucks. You can see that “toy truck” is the most popular phrase, but “toy fire” and “toy garbage truck” are also often used, so you should gear your content towards those phrases as well. Generally speaking, the higher the “count” (which is really just a relative measure of the popularity of a term) the more difficult it will be to attain a high ranking for that phrase.
A key word search tool can be used to be used to construct the key word pyramid you will be using in your campaign.
The second tool you will need is one that helps you gauge your progress in the rankings. Googlerankings.com is probably the best one available. This website will allow you to check your websites ranking for any key phrase within the first 1000 results. Once you have familiarized yourself with these tools, you are ready to begin building your pyramid.
Building your key phrase pyramid
Let us suppose you have decided to start your own web design business. Incidently, this is probably one of the most competitve fields you could choose, but if that is your passion, this fact should not stop you. You decide that you want to eventually rank on the first page of Google for the term “web design.” Given the competition, you should be prepared for years of work as you begin building the best, most informative and entertaining site on the Internet about “web design.”
In the mean time, however, you have bills to pay, and you cannot wait around for a top ranking for the phrase “web design” before landing your first job. Instead, you should begin by targeting less competitive terms and work your way up.
A key phrase pyramid has your most desirable search phrase at the very top, in this case “web design.” Beneath this top level are “secondary phrases.” Secondary phrases contain your phrase plus one additional term. Beneath this level are the tertiary phrases, which contain your phrase plus two additional terms. You should build your pyramid as deep as the key phrase search tool can provide data.
You begin your campaign, then, by writing content and procuring links that point to your site using the key phrases at the bottom of the pyramid. For example, if I were trying to promote my own site, informationarchitech for the phrase “web site design company,” it would be best to try to find sites that will exchange links with me, and point to my site in this way:
Informationarchitech - web site design company.
It would also be a good idea to write a number of pages that focus on this topic, and use this phrase about 2-3% of the time in the text.
Realistically speaking, however, even the phrase “web site design company” is highly competitive, and could probably use a pyramid of its own. One approach would be to add regional qualifiers. For example, our company is located in Lafayette, Louisiana. Lafayette Louisiana web site design company might be a good place to start, followed by Louisiana web site design company, etc.
You should create an excel spreadsheet containing a list of the terms you are working on, and check your rankings in Googlerankings.com weekly. There is something very encouraging about being able to see the results of your efforts, even if it means moving from position 500 to 490. Given the vast number of websites available, getting in the first 1,000 results can be an accomplishment in itself and is a much more encouraging start than being off the map completely.
If you or your company desires assistance in building and maintaining an SEO campaign, do not hesitate to contact us for a free quote on our SEO services.
Keeping the previous structure intact
November 1st, 2006Keeping the previous structure intact is an vital commitment for information architects. Moving forward is required for success, but maintaining continuity with the past is essential to maintaining balance. This concept is rather broad, but can be illustrated in a few examples.
Imagine, for example, you have a website which sells hundreds of products that are poorly organized. Let us say you sell books. You have a category for “Romance,” another for “Renaissance Literature,” another for “Robert Louis Stevenson,” and yet another for “Hardbacks.” What is wrong with this picture?
Bascially, the main issue here is that a static category structure (if one must be used at all) should remain as simple as possible. Specifically, any category structure must be centered about one and only one attribute. Described above are category names which reference four different types of attributes: Genre, Time, Author, Hardback/Paperback.
The short solution is to reduce the category scheme to one attribute, and then delegate the remaining category attributes to the product level. In other words, if Genre was decided upon as the key attribute, and it was decided that an edition of Remembrance of Things Past should be placed into it, certain field values would be associated with this product to compensate for the lost categories. Time=19th century, Author= Marcel Proust, Cover=Hardback, etc.
From this point, with some basic coding, the user should be able to “drill down” to the exact, desired product will little effort, only by knowing beforehand the genre he/she desired.
How then, do we implement a new, more intelligent structure, while keeping the previous structure intact? There are a number of techniques involved here. But you can first be sure that any old urls used in your site (for example, if your site has high ranking pages indexed in the search engines, or links from other high traffic web sites) will remain active following the transition. The goal is not to kill the old urls immediately, but to phase them out gradually, at a natural pace, as the new structure takes effect.
In order to learn more about how Informationarchitech can clean up your website categories, while keeping the previous structure intact, click here to request a free consultation.
Virtual Categories
October 22nd, 2006The current development of search technology is demonstrating a much greater awareness of intelligence and meaning in information than we have had before. As chaos theory has taught us, the multiplication of virtually (and perhaps literally) any set of data along enough iterations will render certain patterns visible, and there are even patterns to the patterns.
What the algorithm developers at Google are only beginning to understand is that certain sets of rules can effectively lead users through the pathways of these basically natural patterns, which are discovered best by observation, experience and long thought. In so doing, they have developed a search technology that is so effective that it manages to help billions of users sort through the single largest collection of data in human history without the use of category, hierarchy, geography, or chronology.
These are, by the way, the five techniques posed by Richard Wurman as the principle means by which humans order information (the other was alphabetization, which to me seems fundamentally the same as chronology… what I call ‘chronology’ was separated by Wurman into “time” and “alphabetization.”)
But of these techniques, where does Google fall? Clearly, none of these terms even come close to describing what Google does.
How might one describe Google’s technique? Matching? A variable weighting system? A highly accelarated system of trial and error? It is difficult to classify for the same reason, I would venture to guess, that Wurman did not think to include it. The fact is, what Google is doing is a very new thing, because it is operating in an environment with which we still have little experience. Put simply, the dynamic rather than the static.
Of all of the techniques mentioned by Wurman all but “time” are basically static in human terms, and this only because time itself is always in motion. Categories have traditionally sliced through data, whereas Google literally “crawls” its way around it. The data is completely without a static state. It has no structure to speak of. No doubt the pages indexed by Google are entered into their own database in some kind of chronological order, but this is at most a key field, basically an index of the physical location of the data on the hardware. As far as any user is concerned, all of the pages are laid out at random, as all of the pages of a thousand encyclopedias placed upon a surface as large as the moon.
What is returned, after entering any term of their spontaneous choosing into a blank search box, is a work of magic—a rabbit pulled from a hat. It is based upon the idea of letting the information order itself. Information is, after all, a product of human intelligence. This means that the seed of intelligence is contained within all information. Intelligence is dynamic, and so should be the pathways used to find the information it generates.
While Google has delievered incredible “results” in a couple of senses, I believe the technique will reach its upper limit fairly soon. They can only keep modifying the search algorithm so long. As information continues to explode (many new sites created every day, very few deleted) so will Google’s infrastructure begin to experience stress. It will need to find another way to break the information down. But moving only forward! Attempts to slice the information up again into static divisions declared from above will fail, if they are ever made. They will either be too broad to have any meaning, or so narrow as to accelarate a “stupidification” process.
There is order to the information that is more than just pulling a new rabbit out of the same hat every time. But the nature of that order changes for every person on every day. There are categories, hierarchies, geographies and chronologies which make perfect sense for most all of the data indexed by Google. But they will never be the same for every person. I believe Google will (and if they do not, some one else will) find a clean method by which to combine categorization with dynamic search results. But the categories will be dynamic, not static. They will not simply change according to the needs of a given situation—the situation itself will create them.
Categories will appear in the the same way that pages currently appear—on the fly, as though pulled out of a hat. But unlike a page result—which is basically an endpoint, and either is or is not what you were looking for—the dynamic, or virtual categories will be forks in the road. They will appear depending upon the general direction you are headed, as well as what surrounds you at a given point in time. (always up to date) Most importantly, they will be circular rather hierarchical. They will be true pathways, making a full circle possible.
Louisiana Web Site Design
September 6th, 2006Louisiana is a state with tremendous natural, cultural and artistic diversity. It is also one that teems with commercial and technological innovation. From the industrial economy of Lake Charles, to the thriving artistic communities of Lafayette and New Orleans, Louisiana has much to offer the people of its state, and the world at large.
For years, Louisiana and its economy was a world unto itself. As the world has changed, however, Lousiana businesses are having to adapt. More and more Louisiana businesses are searching for ways to bring their unique products and services to the table of the global marketplace.
The internet is the fastest and most cost-effective way to create exposure for the products and services of Louisiana businesses. A presence on the Internet can open previously unimagined markets. Properly designed web sites can place Louisiana companies on a much larger playing field, generating wider interest in local products and services than would otherwise be possible.
Because Louisiana is unique, there is a growing need for Louisiana web design companies with an intimate understanding of Louisiana culture. Louisiana web designers face a two-fold challenge.
- Communicate the needs and interests of Louisiana businesses in a way that will be recognizable by Louisiana consumers, and
- Communicate this same information to the rest of the world in such a way that it will be universally understood, while remaining true to the flavor of Louisiana culture.
There are many web design companies in Louisiana, but few who are up to the challenge of ensuring their clients information is “findable,” both to individuals in Louisiana and the larger world.
Findability has both internal and external aspects, which a Louisiana web design company must take into consideration. You want people to find your website, to be sure. But once they have found it, you want to also make sure your website is designed in such a way that the person arriving on your site can quickly find whatever it is he or she is looking for, in two clicks or less.
- External Findability is accomplished with search engine optimization (SEO), which means getting your site to rank high in the search engines (Google, Yahoo, MSN) for relevant key phrases.
- Internal Findability is accomplished through the use of easy, intuitive navigational structures, logical category structures, clear web content writing and sophisticated search functionalities.
There are many Louisiana web design companies that can help you present your product or service in an attractive light, but few that are committed to making sure the right people will find what you are offering.
Informationarchitech is one Louisiana web design and promotion firm with an emphasis on findability. Our aim is to make the knowledge, products and services of our State “findable” in the larger, and ever expanding Web of information.
Louisiana Web Promotion
August 21st, 2006informationarchiTECH is a Lafayette-based Louisiana web design company offering a wide range of Web services including graphic design, category management and content management, custom applications, navigational analysis and design, and web promotion.
What is “web promotion?”
You could have the most flashy, cutting-edge website on the Internet, but if no one can find it, you might as well not have one at all. Many companies make the mistake of focusing their energy entirely on web design, assuming that promotion will take care of itself.
If you are looking for a Louisiana web design company to build a website that can showcase your information, products or services, you are also going to need a Louisiana web promotion company that can ensure that your website is not lost among the thousands, or even millions of other web pages with similar offerings.
Whether you are a Louisiana company with an existing website, or simply are not satisfied with the results of your current one, the following are a few questions you should ask.
What is the purpose of my website?
There are basically two kinds of websites: brochure web sites and dynamic web sites.
A brochure website is essentially a supplement to your business card. They find the address on your card or other promotional materials and go online to read your content, see images/photographs, or view Flash presentations. Successful businesses usually outgrow a brochure website after a short period of time.
A dynamic website is an extension of your business. It should generate revenue on its own, either by procuring new business, or selling your product using an online shopping cart. While not necessary for brochure sites, a dynamic site requires web promotion in order to do its job.
Who am I trying to reach, and how am I going to reach them?
InformationarchiTECH provides web promotion for businesses across the United States. Given our location in Lafayette, however, we focus on Louisiana web promotion in order to enhance the economy and businesses of our region.
Your product or service may be similar. It may be useful to people throughout the world, however you may wish to target your particular region. There are many methods of online web promotion which allow you to target potential clients in your area, while still leaving the door open to expand beyond your regional borders.
How much do I have to spend?
If you are like most businesses in Louisiana, you do not have an unlimited budget for your web promotion campaign. You want to be sure the money you spend is put in the right place, and will continue to benefit you in the long-term.
InformationarchiTECH offers web promotion services for Louisiana businesses that will bring a short- as well as long-term returns on your investment. Utilizing techniques of search engine optimization, we will help your Louisiana web site attain top rankings in Google for the phrases related to your products or services. As we like to say, we will make you #1, by making your website #1.
How can I be sure you will help our customer find us?
You found us didn’t you?
Louisiana Web Design
August 13th, 2006It is not unusual for a web design business to have a global reach. The nature of the medium, the Internet, is in itself global. One is just as likely to reach a clientele in India as New York, or your neighbor down the street.
What is becoming truly unique, however, is a web design company that has sunk its roots deeply into the region in which its offices are physically located, soaking up the culture and creative energy of the region and putting it to work for the development of websites with character and local charm.
InformationarhiTECH is a Lafayette-based Louisiana Web Design company with a particular connection and commitment to the small and medium-sized businesses of Acadiana and beyond. Anyone who has lived here understands that Louisiana is like a country unto itself, with a history, language and culture that is unlike any other in the United States. A Louisiana web designer must understand these qualities in order to develop websites that speak to the people of this region.
Louisiana is a region of tremendous diversity, teeming with commercial and artistic endeavors. InformationarchiTECH is a Louisiana web design company commited to assisting Louisiana businesses in rising to the top in the global marketplace with attractive and easily navigable websites. Whether you desire an attractive porfolio site for your work, or want to develop a full-fledged e-commerce solution to complement your physical business, informationarchiTECH is ready to serve you.
We offer the following services for Louisiana businesses of all stages:
- Search engine optimization (SEO) - Appearing high in the rankings for searches in Google is becoming increasingly critical to anyone wanting a viable presence on the web. More and more people are turning to search engines to find local services, from restaurants to clothes, to art and entertainment. InformationarchiTECH can help your Louisiana based business easy to find by all those who are looking for your product or service.
- Turn Key Web solutions - These “out of the box” solutions provide an easy way for small businesses in Louisiana to gain an immediate presence on the web with little immediate investment of capital. Whether you simply want a blog-based website to portfolio your work, or a turn key online store to sell your product, have a look at our selection to determine if one of these packages is right for you.
- Category Management/Local navigation - Whether your database-driven system is used online, or internally to your company, informationarchiTECH provides category management services that help streamline the process of storing and retrieving your company’s valuable information. We can reorganize existing databases using the most recent technology, whether Windows or Linux-based, and optimize your systems performance to suit your particualar needs.
- Web content writing - No website would be complete without persuasive and informative web copy, which fully describes the nature of your product, service, or any message you are trying to communicate. We offer competitively priced copyrighting services for any business, on or offline.
While InformationarchiTECH does serve a global clientele, we are especially commited to serving the people of our community which have made our business and our lives so enjoyable. Louisiana based companies will have the added benefit of meeting with us personally to develop strategies for your online venture, whether streamlining an existing web presence, or building one from scratch.
Your Louisiana web site design company is only a click, or a call away. Contact us for a free consultation using our online form, or pick up the phone and call us at 337-706-7460.
SEO: Science or Alchemy?
August 8th, 2006In the age of Augustus Rex of Prussia, the European world was filled with men who many regarded as tricksters, and some as possessors of a secret art. Calling themselves ‘Alchemists,’ they claimed to posess the ability to transform one element into another–namely, lead into gold. The recipes were said to be found among the pages of ancient Roman poetry such as Ovid or Virgil. The practitioners include many whose names have been lost, and others, like Sir Isaac Newton, whose names are as known to us as common household words. As secretive in their person as in their art, most alchemists never found themselves in a position where their claims were put to the ultimate test. Johannes Friedrich Böttger was one who did not get off so easily. Augustus “the Strong” had him locked away into a chamber in the Royal Palace until the day that he could successfully transform lead into gold. He never succeeded in his efforts, but made a discovery no less precious–the recipe for porcelain, which until that moment had been a secret of the Orient.
A more complete history of this discovery and its impact can be found on the website for which I wrote all content, which currently ranks #1 in Google for the term “antique china.” (#9 for “porcelain”) Its current position did not occur by accident, but through the deliberate efforts of myself, who wrote all of the content, and others who were at that time my mentors. The process is called “Search Engine Optimization,” a service which is purported to guarantee high rankings in the “organic results” of search engines like Google, Yahoo or MSN. An exact search for the term “search engine optimization” returned 76 million results in Google on the day of this blog’s writing. Clearly a competitive industry; but with so many companies across the world offering this service, how can their claims all possibly be true?
Questions about the veracity of SEO’s claims have given rise to broader questions about whether the “industry” is anything more than another manifestation of the snake oil salesman with upgraded technology. Considering that Google’s “ranking algorithm” is a kept secret, consisting of thousands of complex mathematical formulas, can a #1 ranking for any term ever truly be guaranteed? Or even a listing on the first page? With this ranking constantly being updated by the engineers at Google and other search engine companies, can SEO really be considered a science that can be learned? Or will it simply remain in the shadowy, unverifiable realm of the Alchemist until the day its outrageous claims are finally forgotten?
As someone who has had personal experience with the success of certain techniques, such as the one mentioned above, I am partial to the belief that there is a craft possessed by some, but not all, which makes certain guarantees regarding placement in the search engine rankings possible. However, all claims must include specific qualifications. The main qualification is that it will require hard work. The more competitive the industry, the harder you should be willing to work in order to obtain the ranking you feel you should deserve. This second qualification is one rarely heard. You should attempt to attain a ranking, not because you have beaten the system, but because you have made your website the true winner.
This was my approach with Antique, China, Porcelain & Collectibles. My process of Search Engine Optimization began with reading books about antiques. Second, I began writing articles about antiques and posting them on the website. In between research and writing, I sought out other antique or porcelain related websites and requested link exchanges. Soon I was building relationships with other antique authorities on their webs, and websites began to link to us, not because we requested a link exchange, but because they valued the information our website contained. Eventually I noticed that eBay sellers were quoting our website in their listings. One day, we woke up and found ourselves in the #1 position for the term “antique china” in Yahoo, and Google was soon to follow.
It is my opinion that if you want to obtain a top ranking for a term, you must first ask yourself whether your website truly merits that positioning. Is your website the most valuable and relevant resource for the majority of people who would submit that search phrase? If it is not, you then have to decide whether you are willing to invest the energy to turn your website into one that is; or choose a more accurate phrase.
Of course, there are plenty of particular techniques in addition to simply writing good content and exchanging links, and having knowledge of these will certainly expedite your rise to the top. In addition, many people can benefit from coaching and encouragement along the way, and it is in these ways that informationarchitech can help you. However it is important to remember that without personal will and determination, no enterprise, web based or otherwise, can succeed.
We may not be able to turn lead into gold, but with careful study and perseverance, there is no reason why you should not be able to use the knowledge you have to become a valued and prosperous presence on the Web. SEO is not an exact science to be sure, but it is not entirely mysterious either. Combining continuous observation with research, the method by which search engines rank websites can be learned. It is not necessary to understand the precise forumula in order to glean the most significant factors. Like alchemists, however, SEOs do their best work when put to the test!
Hide and Seek - The dilemma of dynamic content, load time and search engines
August 8th, 2006In the earliest days of web design, there was no such thing as “dynamic content.” What you saw is what you got. This period, however, did not last long as developers learned to use javascript to insert content into the page whenever a user clicked on a link or performed some other action. Even though it may have been encoded in javascript, however, the content was still somewhere in the source code, and therefore still had to be loaded at the time the page was accessed.
The discovery of AJAX took things a step further. By combining javascript with “server side scripting,” AJAX gives you the ability to insert content into your page based upon changing variables and requests. You can use AJAX, for example, to retrieve information from your database and display it on the screen without reloading the page.
What does all of this mean?
Let us take a step back for a moment and put this into context for those who may not have programming experience, because the lesson here is relevant for anyone who wants the utmost performance from their website. A concrete example should serve to illustrate the point.
Let us suppose you wanted to put the entire contents of the Encyclopedia Britannica on your website, but you do not want to the user to have to go to different pages. Simple enough, right? You just sit down at your computer one evening and transcribe all the volumes A-Z into a single webpage and give it the address www.yourwebsite.com/encyclopedia.htm.
What do you think is going to happen when someone tries to access this page? Well, the best case scenario is that the vistor would see a blank screen for several hours while all of the content was being loaded. Finally, if the connection was not lost, they would see the encyclopedia contents appear. The content would go so far down the page that the visitor could scroll down all day and not see the end of it. Not a very efficient way of doing things.
Now, throw javascript into the equation. You would now have the option of dividing the encyclopedia into many pages that the user could page through by clicking buttons or entering numbers into a form field. However, with this approach the page will still take the same amount of time to load. The scroll issue would be resolved, but not the load time.
Using AJAX in this example, instead of loading the encyclopedia into a web page you would load it into your database instead. Then using javascript and backend “scripting,” you could load the content as it is needed without ever reloading the page. The first time the user accessed encyclopedia.htm, the first page on the encyclopedia would appear almost instantly. Then, as they pressed a button paging forward, the content would change without ever reloading the page. It would appear to be lightning fast. However, if the user ever chose to look at the source code, the first page is still all that would appear.
This is of course an extreme, and rather silly example, but hopefully it helps explain the difference between static content, and content generated by javascript and AJAX.
So what’s the dilemma?
In the above example, it would seem that the most obvious choice is the use of AJAX. Fast load time, lighting fast changing content, what could be better? Here’s the problem:
If you chose to display page 1 of volume A when the visitor accesses the page, that is all that would appear in the source code as well. In other words, that is all the search engines would see. This is a major drawback. If someone were to search for “zoology” in Google, they would never find the zoology entry in your encyclopedia page because as far as any search engine can tell, it is not there.
In some cases, that is a problem. In others, it is exactly what you want.
Another, more real life example may help. Suppose you have a website that sells electronic equipment online. As a comprehensive dealer, you have over 200 categories on your website, which product offerings ranging from car stereos, to TVs and computers. Now it would be nice if the visitor could find any other category on your website from any page. However, it is not practical to load all 200 categories onto every page, both from a user experience and a search engine standpoint.
From the user point of view, the pages would take forever to load. From a search engine standpoint, the “relevancy” of every page would be diluted considerably. With every page pointing to 200 other pages or more, Google would not be able to tell much difference between a page that is about TVs and a page that is about computers. The use of AJAX would be a good approach to this problem.
Sometimes, however, you want the content in your page. If you have a page about TVs, for example, and have 15 other categories about TVs, you would want those links to be in the source code in order to help search engines determine what your page is about. However, due to space requirements, you might have a need to compress the display of that content.
A Working Example
With appropriate use of javascript and AJAX it is possible to strike a perfect balance between content that appears in the source code, and content that is loaded dynamically. Best of all, the appearance of the two approaches will be indistinguishable to your visitors.
The following are two collapsable/expandable trees. The first uses javascript, the second uses AJAX. The source code follows each example to make the distinction clear.
Example 1: Javascript
- Category 1
- Element 1
- Category 2
- Element 2
Code:
<ul>
<li>Category 1
<ul>
<li>Element 1</li>
</ul>
</li>
<li>Category 2
<ul>
<li>Element 2</li>
</ul>
</li>
</ul>
Example 2: AJAX
- Category 1
- Category 2
Code:
<ul>
<li>Category 1</li>
<li>Category 2</li>
</ul>
You can see that although the behavior of these two lists is exactly the same, what appears in the source code is quite different. Namely, the sublists in the AJAX example do not actually appear in the source code. They are loaded dynamically at the precise moment you click the plus sign to “open” the list.
It is possible to blend these two approaches such that part of your list is loaded when the page is first accessed, while the rest is loaded only as the user requests it. For example, if you had a tree that went five levels deep, you could load the first two levels and load the rest as it is needed. This will keep your code clean and the relevancy of your page intact, while still allowing for ultimate mobility on the user end side.
Informationarchitech is glad to offer assistance to businesses and individuals who wish to integrate dynamic content using javascript and AJAX on the navigational elements of their website. Contact us for a free consultation.
About Me: I am a Web site and application developer based in Lafayette, Louisiana. I specialize in Internet marketing, social media applications, search engine optimization, and interface development.
Contact: Aaron Lozier
phone (337) 205-2365
fax (801) 348-2280
email lozieraj@gmail.com
Reach Me Online
(Contact Form/Live Chat)
