Basic
A well-optimized Web site design and structure helps to improve the overall performance of your Web site, making it easier for users to navigate and for search engines to find and index all of your content.
One way to ensure that search engines find all of your content is by submitting a sitemap. Think of your sitemap as an outline of your entire Web site. As you add new content to your Web site, you should submit your sitemap to the search engines on a regular basis, every 24 hours or so.
In addition to a company information page, your Web site should also contain a page explaining your privacy policy.
Advanced
A robots.txt file allows you to tell the spiders what they may and may not do when they arrive at your domain. Robots.txt files also provide you a means to prevent both potential copyright infringements and search-engine spiders from consuming excessive amounts of bandwidth on your server.
The “nofollow” attribute instructs search-engine spiders that they should not follow a particular link or view that link as anything of significance when determining ranking.
A second advance Web site structural consideration is the way you structure your URLs. Search engines as well as people prefer URLs that are simple and that include the keywords describing the page within the URL string.
A third structural consideration is the use of an .htaccess file. An .htaccess file is the Apache Web server’s configuration file.
Other advanced Web site structural considerations include using “mod_rewrite” to rewrite URLs and using 301 redirects whenever you change or redesign your Web site. Each advanced structuring technique provides you with procedures to ensure that search engines recognize your Web site and that each of your Web pages are correctly indexed.
