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Types of Web pages

According to usability professionals, there are many types of Web pages. I have heard usability experts state that there are seven types of Web pages, and I have heard others state that there are eleven.

Regardless of the number, it is important for online marketers to understand that different types of Web pages exist. Reason? How you will write, design, optimize, and promote a Web page will depend on the page type.

Below is a list of various types of Web pages:

For example, should search engine marketers optimize a Product page the same way they would optimize a Form page? The optimization and design strategies will be different because the calls to action (CTAs) will be different on each type of page.

Moreover, site visitors expect to see specific information on a Product page, information that might not be available on a Form page. Some of this information might be search-friendly. Some information might not be search-friendly. Some information might push important keyword-rich text below the fold.

I believe that only usability professionals who understand search behavior and design can make qualified recommendations on site and page architecture. All to often, search engine marketers make recommendations that negatively affect the user experience. What good are top search engine positions if site visitors have a poor user experience?

Page layout and structure

Since there are different types of Web pages, it naturally follows that the layout strategies for one type of page, such as an online form (Forms page), might not work for a different type of Web page, such as a press release (News page).

For example, let's use a Product page from an ecommerce site. On a Product page, visitors might expect to see the following information:

Do users expect all of these Product page characteristics on a Home, News, or Forms page? No, because every page type has unique characteristics to make it effective. Sometimes certain page types can be search-engine friendly. Sometimes, due to the nature of the page (such as a page with "legalese") they cannot.

Page layout is important for search engine visibility. Copywriters can write of the keyword-rich copy. But if search engines and site visitors are unable access to that copy, then Web pages will not appear at the top of the "natural" search results.

Even Google admits that design and layout are important at http://www.google.com/technology/index.html:

Google goes far beyond the number of times a term appears on a page and examines all aspects of the page's content (and the content of the pages linking to it) to determine if it's a good match for your query.I admit that it can be rather difficult to create sites that are search-engine friendly because each page template can have many unique characteristics. The search-friendly development process might be difficult and time consuming - but not impossible. With solid user testing and Web analytics software, both designers and marketers can build pages that please both site visitors AND the search engines.

Cross-linking

If I had to pick one aspect of Web site architecture that developers and marketers do incorrectly, I would have to pick this component. Cross-linking is not only important for search engine visibility, it is also important for upselling and usability.

Basically, there are two types of cross-linking: hierarchical (vertical) and related (horizontal). One only needs to look at the breadcrumb links an online clothing store to see a vertical hierarchy:

Home > Women's Clothing > Tops > Blouses > Long-sleeveThe cross-linking is evident in this text-link navigation. To view the categories in Women's Clothing, site visitors can click on the "Women's Clothing" text link. If visitors want to see the types of blouses available on this site, they can click on the "Blouses" text link.

What many online marketers fail to do, however, is cross-link related pages. For example, let's use a press release (News page). If prospects find your site's press release through a search engine or ad, what do you want them to do when they view the press release page? Do you want them to view your featured product or service? Do you want them to contact your Public Relations person? Do you want them to request more information? Do you want them to call you? Do you want them to download a free white paper? What are you doing to ensure that prospects get to the desired information they have searched for?

Effective cross-linking is not simply adding text-link navigation and a site map. It is a far more complicated process because one type of Web pages will use one form of cross-linking (such as upselling), and another type of Web page will use another form (download this white paper).

Conclusion

Building and maintaining a successful Web site architecture is not a simple process. A site's navigation scheme, page layout, and cross-linking strategy might work on one type of page but not another.

I believe usability professionals are the best source of information for effective site architectures, not search engine marketers. Usability professionals constantly test page and site layouts BEFORE they launch a site to the public. They constantly monitor site statistics software and sales to determine the effectiveness of their layouts.

Even though many developers and search engine marketers perform some of the same tasks, my personal opinion is that usability professionals see beyond the search engine positioning. First and foremost, they try to satisfy real users. Search engine marketers, on the other hand, focus too heavily on positioning.

Shari Thurow is Marketing Director at Grantastic Designs, Inc., a full-service search engine marketing, web and graphic design firm. This article is excerpted from her book, Search Engine Visibility (http://www.searchenginesbook.com) published in January 2003 by New Riders Publishing Co. Shari can be reached at shari@grantasticdesigns.com.

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