Make Sure Google Knows What Business Your Business Is In
Site Taxonomy:
Are You In The Right Place?
Taxonomy is the science (and art) of classifying a broad range of things. Originally used to classify plants and animals – phylum, genus, species, etc. – taxonomy is now applied to everything from product inventory to web sites. Yes, web sites.
Most successful site owners are very familiar with search engine optimization (SEO) and the well-known principles of web site optimization. SEO makes sites friendlier, more accessible and more likely to be properly and accurately indexed. Sites that are mis-indexed or worse, not indexed at all, won’t benefit from SE-driven traffic because links to those sites won’t appear on search engine results pages (SERPs). You might as well be invisible because to search engines, you are – regardless of how well your site is optimized! The reason? Haphazard or a complete lack of site taxonomy.
SEO, in Short
When search engines spider a site, they count up keywords, track in-site links, check incoming links and plug all of this data into a mathematical formula called a search engine algorithm. These algorithms are constantly tweaked, revised and completely updated, all in an effort to improve the relevancy of the search engines’ results pages. This is all pretty basic stuff and there are plenty of applications and professional SEOs to provide the optimization information you need.
However, SEO, by itself, isn’t enough. It’s quite possible that a visiting SE spider under-indexed your site or improperly classified it as something it’s not. Or, perhaps the spiders we’re so confused about what your site was, it wasn’t indexed at all. If you sell handmade dollhouses and imported olive oil on the same site, a spider won’t know how to classify the site. Hence, no Google listing.
Site Taxonomy
A well-designed site taxonomy will ensure that your site is completely and accurately indexed by the major search engines. Here’s how it works.
In assessing the attributes of a site, search engines attempt to classify the site based on its taxonomy – the keywords and keyword positioning used in HTML coding and in the site’s text.
For example, let’s say that a site selling bicycles relies heavily on one keyword: bicycles. It appears throughout the text and it’s in
Spiders have no context and they certainly aren’t capable of discerning context. What about bicycles does the site do? Report bicycle news? Sell bike parts? Sell bikes? Restore them? Repair them?
Taxonomy provides spiders with the means to place your site within some context so that it can be properly classified and indexed by the search engine.
So, in addition to bicycles as the main keyword, add bikes, bicycle parts, pedals, wheels, bicycle repairs, tires, racing bikes and so forth. Now the indiscriminate spider knows what the site is about because bicycles now has context.
This is an extreme example since site owners always use more than one keyword. But, are they the right keywords to fit the search engine taxonomy?
Search Engine Taxonomy
Site taxonomy becomes search engine taxonomy through the regular indexing of 150 million pages of site text each day. And that’s just Google.
Search engines employ their own taxonomy to classify each indexed site, and while they do their automated best, mistakes happen and they’re difficult to repair.
Search engines use the keywords that top-level sites employ to develop their own methodology for site classification. So, the keywords used by the top 10 or 20 online bike shops define the range and specificity of keywords for the search engine’s ‘bicycle sales’ classification. And, if your site taxonomy dovetails with the search engine taxonomy, you’ll be accurately indexed and may, in fact, see a significant increase in SE-driven traffic because your site is where it should be when SE users query.
You Can’t Copyright Keywords
Knowing that SE taxonomy is defined by the top sites within a given classification, it makes sense to employ the same keywords as the bigger players do. At least some of them.
There are lots of metrics software packs that’ll give you the keywords entered by SE users, but you can actually see the keywords used by the competition with just a few clicks.
Log on to the competitor site using Internet Explorer> Click on View> Scroll down and click on Source. The HTML code behind the site will appear in a separate window. Check the code for the keywords the successful site uses. Then, judiciously cherry pick those keywords that fit your site.
For example, many commercial sites use product names as keywords. A running shoe site would use Nike and Puma, for instance. Obviously, if you don’t sell the same brands don’t use the same keywords. Add your own brand names.
And obviously, don’t use keywords that describe products or services you don’t offer. A significant difference in keywords used in HTML tags and keywords in the site text will get you slammed by SEs who think you’re using black hat tactics to deceive the search engine. Not a good thing.
Conclusions
Site optimization won’t do a thing if the site is mis-indexed. To avoid being mis-indexed, under- or partially-indexed, provide contextual clues that better enable search engines to place your site in the right category.
Use keywords employed by the top 10 to 20 sites to adjust your site taxonomy to the established search engine taxonomy.
Take full advantage of search engine traffic by making sure search engines understand just what your site is all about.
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