Architecture

Two important components of web designing are website architecture and search engine optimization (SEO). Web architecture, as the name suggests, is an overall approach to the design of the system and just like an architectural monument, it requires planning into functional, aesthetic as well as technical domains. The end result, as always, is user centric. Proper interaction of the website with the internet is kept in mind while designing the architecture. Semantic web and web 2.0 have dramatically changed the way web architecture is perceived, with more emphasis on the information’s structural aspects.

The above mentioned two concepts have enabled sharing of unstructured data in a uniform manner, providing a common platform. Web architecture is often confused with web designing, but while web design is more of a practical task, which incorporates various other tasks including architecture, website architecture is more of an intellectual concept, which requires proper chain of thought before the actual design. It also includes coding to make the site faster and more attractive, resulting in an enhanced viewer experience.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is another integral component of the art of web designing. It is akin to what is known as ‘advertizing’ in financial terms. Essentially, it is required for any web page’s success that more and more viewers visit the page and this is possible if the website is listed right among the top search results of any search engine. This is taken care of by SEO. It has to manage the web page in such a way that it shows up as among the most relevant results in almost all kinds of searches, be it news, local, image or academic search. Optimization for searches began in the early 90s, when the concept of cataloging by search engines came into practice. With growing market and competition, the urge to be listed the first as a search result became more, as the user’s attention span and time availability reduced, leading to great technological advancements, than a single ‘spider’ search.

There are some useful methods under SEO. Indexing one’s web page to the popular search engines such as Google, Yahoo or Bing is one of the most logical ones. These engines use ‘crawlers’ to find the relevant pages and the web pages, once indexed, need not be submitted again. Then, there is the concept of preventive crawling, where the webmasters can shield some part of the web page from getting indexed, which aren’t desirable or relevant. Improving the visibility of a site by cross linking its pages to provide more links is a useful method. For image searches, image search optimization is also essential to ensure a page’s visibility. This can be done normally through using high resolution images and providing relevant description about them, trying to match the keywords as close as possible.

Mark