Taxonomy and seo sla 05-06-10(jc)

SLA Cincinnati Taxonomy, Metadata & Search Optimization
May 6th, 2010
Seth Earley
President
seth@earley.com
781-820-8080
Jeff Carr
Senior Consultant
jeff@earley.com
780-819-7275

Today’s Agenda
Taxonomy and Enterprise Architecture
Introduction & Overview of Taxonomy & SEO
Importance of Aligning Different Perspectives
Recommendations
Q&A Session
2

Seth Earley, Founder & President, Earley & Associates
Co-author of Practical Knowledge Management from IBM Press
16 years experience building content and knowledge management systems, 25+ years experience in technology
Former Co-Chair, Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, Science and Technology Council Metadata Project Committee
Founder of the Boston Knowledge Management Forum
Former adjunct professor at Northeastern University
Currently working with enterprises to develop knowledge and digital asset management systems, taxonomy and metadata governance strategies
Founder of Taxonomy Community of Practice – host monthly conference calls of case studies on taxonomy derivation and application. http://finance.groups.yahoo.com/group/TaxoCoP
Co-founder Search Community of Practice:
http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/SearchCoP
3

Jeff Carr, Senior Consultant, Earley & Associates
Bachelor of Commerce from the University of Alberta with a major in Management Information Systems (MIS) and a minor in International Business
Multi-disciplinary foundation in the areas of:
search engine marketing
information architecture
web analytics
project management
business analysis
web development
Responsible for the strategy, development and implementation of numerous web-based initiatives
Expert in SharePoint Information Architecture
Expert in eCommerce taxonomies, faceted search and heuristic analysis
All around good guy
4

5
It’s all about…
Searching
Browsing
Finding

Taxonomy and Enterprise Architecture Frameworks

Taxonomy is a Foundation…
It is a system for classification
It allows for a means to organize documents, digital assets and web content
Helps us fine tune search tools and mechanisms
Creates a common language for sharing concepts
Allows for a coherent approach to integrate information sources
It is a common language for business processes

Goals of a Taxonomy
Allow for knowledge discovery
Improve usability of applications as well as learnability of applications
Reduce the cost of delivering services, developing products and conducting operations
Improve operational efficiencies by allowing for reuse of information and assets rather than recreation
Improve search results and applicability (both precision and recall)

Taxonomy Definition
Taxonomy is a system for organizing concepts and categorizing content
Expresses hierarchical relationships (parent/child)
Arranged in a tree-like structure, with top level categories that branch out to reveal sub-categories and terms in varying levels of depth
Dictionary of preferred terminology
Products
Games
Action figures
Card games
Board games
Brands
Milton Bradley
Disney
Scrabble
Battleship

Taxonomy and Metadata
It is the “is – ness” of a piece of content
And the “about – ness” of a piece of content
This is a Product Description
It is about the Motorola Razr
Taxonomies are the organizing principle behind metadata and the values that populate metadata fields

FAQ
Product
Press release
Specification
Promotion
Taxonomy and Metadata
“is – ness”
Metadata for a product page in a content management system
Title
Doc_ID
Doc_Type
Date
Author
Product_Name
“about – ness”
Features
Category
Assets in a content management system need to be tagged with metadata for retrieval and management of information

The (Traditional) Data Architect View of Metadata
Operational Metadata
Data source description
Data fields
Data structure
File description
Database definition (e.g. ddl)
External files lineage
ETL – Metadata
Rule descriptions
Data cleansing
Data extension
Data transition
Database Design/physicals
Rules for
Modeling data
Security
Building
Cube definition
Aggregation
Metadata
Metadata
Metadata
Target database
Source data
ETL Tools
BI Metadata
Norms for report creation
Report-Folder
Report-Format
Report-Execution
Data mining Process
Metadata
Metadata
Modeling Tools
BI/Reporting Tools
Courtesy of Stu Carty – Gavlian Research
12

Parallel Perspectives
What is the difference between a data architect, a taxonomist and an information architect?
Data architects are concerned with structured data and technical aspects of applications and database design
Taxonomists are concerned with unstructured content semantics and the meaning of terms
Information architects consider how structured data elements, unstructured content meaning and user intent combine to form the user experience

The (Traditional) Taxonomist View of Metadata
Taxonomy: system for organizing and classifying content
Metadata: information about our content, housekeeping, as well as semantic and structural information
Content Objects: groups of metadata that are assembled into components that are then assembled into pages or documents
How will taxonomy surface on the front-facing application?
What do the wireframes suggest?
How do people interact with content?
How does the content architecture deliver the front-end design?

Enterprise Architecture Requires a Holistic View
Enterprise architecture
“A comprehensive framework used to manage and align an organization's Information Technology (IT) assets, people, operations, and projects with its operational characteristics. In other words, the enterprise architecture defines how information and technology will support the business operations and provide benefit for the business.”
The National Institutes of Health http://enterprisearchitecture.nih.gov/About/What/

Taxonomy Frameworks in Enterprise Architecture
Related documents
Browsing & filtering
Compare product
Financial reporting
Case Example:
Motorola’s Global
Taxonomy Framework
Served Multiple Processes
Business intelligence
Program Management
Product Lifecycle Management
16

17
From Technical Design to User Experience…
Case Example:
American Greetings
…becomes the foundation for a flexible, intuitive user experience
Developing a technical model of content, assets and processes…

Example Trends Which Require Solid IA
Business Intelligence needs metadata on structured data as the basis for quantitative analysis, taxonomy on unstructured content for the results of analysis
Extend traditional quantitative BI with qualitative BI from unstructured content once a taxonomy is applied:
analysis of risk/no risk claims by disease category
analysis of call center issues by product to monitor a recall
analysis of ad placement effectiveness by social media context
Master Data Management needs taxonomy – both aim to define a “single version of the truth”
MDM to eliminate structured data redundancy
Taxonomy to eliminate unstructured content ambiguity

Ideal Scenario: Master Taxonomy as a Service
Example from another client – Taxonomy as a service

Each group of stakeholders has different issues
Different timelines
Different terminology
Battling old ways of working
Different workflows
Marketing & CMO
Manufacturing
Legal & CSO
Finance & CFO
Business Intelligence
Merchant Team
Fulfillment
Customer Service
IT Team & CIO
Challenges in Enterprise Architecture

Different Clock Speeds

FAST
E commerce suite
Reconcile vendor product metadata with structure and format for catalog, merchandising, order management
Digital Asset Management
Guided navigation
Facets and attributes based on taxonomy resolve with search user experience best practices
Structure and terminology to support non text asset location and reuse
Product taxonomy
Cross sell/up sell
Content management
Semantic relationships for related products, controlled terminology for merchandisers to support specific promotions
Content and document types, topics/subjects, audiences, etc to support unstructured information
Different Terminology

Different Workflows
Brick and Mortar
BI/Reporting
Product taxonomy
Ad Campaigns
Signage
Finance
www.Bestbuy.com

Difficulty Changing Paradigms
“We have everything we need to know about our products from the SKU…” Merchandiser
“Taxonomy values are just a list of terms…” Data Architect
Caption = BDY FATHER FRM DAUGH
Recipient = Father
Occasion = Birthday
Sender = Daughter
“We can drive content semantics from composite database keys…” Database Architect
“I’m more comfortable indexing content than dealing with back end systems…” Taxonomist
+
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Products & Services
Industry
Sectors
Qualitative
Measures
Policies &
Compliance
Marketing
Assets
Customer Relationships
Taxonomy defines the unstructured half of Enterprise Architecture
What unstructured information does the business need to organize?
Which of these are shared among departments or business processes?
Which are specific to a functional area or business initiative?
Enterprise
Taxonomies
Use Taxonomy to Unify Business Operations

The Evolution of Taxonomy
Taxonomy has evolved from a library science/ information architecture/ content organization perspective
Used to improve the ability to find content once you arrive at a web site
Perspective: internal, focused on “self selected” audiences
Typically does not consider how people arrive on your site, just that they are there and tries to direct users down an appropriate path
26

Why is Taxonomy Important?
Main interaction customers have with your site
They are a key element of good design and findability
Even the best taxonomies need a little spring cleaning
They can become disorganized, out of control over time
They can fall out of line with industry trends and competitors
They can be mismatched with user terminology and be ignored by search engines
Taxonomy Heuristics are Best Practices that ensure:
1. Content is findable
2. Taxonomy maintenance and growth is based on methodology
27

What is SEO?
Part of Internet Marketing
Strategies used to conduct marketing activities on the web in an effort to attract and convert targeted visitors into customers
Includes
Website design, copywriting, online promotion, social media, and search engine optimization etc…
28
Leverage site terms and organizing principles
Including preferred and variant terms, related terms (i.e.; taxonomy and thesaurus structures)
Ultimate Goal
To increase the amount of relevant and targeted traffic to your website

Why is SEO Important?
Search engine optimization is a key activity in acquiring qualified traffic to your site
If ignored, technical and contextual factors can seriously impede performance
Continuous process requiring constant monitoring
Seasonal trends in search behavior
Identifying new or hot products
Competitors
Informs site taxonomies to ensure:
1. Effective landing pages
2. Visits turn into conversions
29

Why Taxonomy & SEO?
Integrating internal and external perspectives
Taxonomy
Used to improve the ability to find content once you arrive at a web site
Internal perspective focused on “self selected” audiences
Typically does not consider how people arrive on your site, just that they are there and tries to direct users down an appropriate path
Search Engine Optimization
Used to improve the ability to find a web site at a macro level
External perspective focused on driving traffic, attracting attention from a broader audience
Typically does not consider how people find content once they are on your site, just that they find it
30

They Should Work Together…
Taxonomy drives information organization
Powers navigation and search
Enhances the user experience
SEO informs taxonomy values
Incorporates customer perspectives / searcher behaviors
31

Misalignment of Terminology
32
I’d like to pick up some new accessories for my PlayStation 3
Not sure where to look so let’s do a search to see what’s out there
Just saw an advertisement from Best Buy for PlayStation 3 Accessories
I think PS3 =
PlayStation 3
“PS3 Accessories”
“PS3 Accessories”
X

Website Findability
What’s the scope of the challenge?
“More than 12 Billion searches conducted in July 2008”
Search Engine Watch – Sep 2, 2008
“1 trillion (as in 1,000,000,000,000) unique URLs”
Official Google Blog – Jul 25, 2008
33

Differing Perspectives
From the perspective of the Searcher…
An evolution from “give me what I said” to “give me what I want”
Don’t always know what they want
Often begin with ambiguous search queries followed by refinement
Does the topic of each page on your site accurately represent the language potential customers are using to find your site?
34

Search Result Delivery
The process for serving a set of results for any search query includes the following elements:
35
Query Analysis
Evaluation of user input against query dependent factors
(i.e. word order, proximity)
Document Retrieval
Fetching of documents that match the user query (1000)
I
Document Ranking
Ordering of the results retrieved
Presentation
Search engine result pages
images
news
local
shopping
personalized
E
E
I
I

Differing Perspectives
From the perspective of the search engine…
36
Implicitly derives the topic or meaning of a page by analyzing and parsing page content
Topic of this page is PlayStation 3, correct?

Topical Analysis of Page Content
Ideally, we’d like to see PlayStation related terminology dominating the text consumed by the search engine
Inferred topic: limited item offers
Supporting terminology – furniture, services, health, home et al. semantically unrelated to the intended concept
37

38
Google Uses Over 200 Signals For Ranking”

Overlap & Alignment
40
SEO
Taxonomy
Content Freshness
Grouping principles
Clean Coding
URL Structure
Label Choice
Synonym Identification
Terminology Research
Relationships
Metadata Optimization
Balance & Term Volume
Link Popularity
Content Hierarchy
Polyhierarchy
Internal Link Structure
Breadth & Depth
Inbound Anchor Text
Facet Construction
Page Speed

41
“Term Selection”

Synonyms
Important for both Taxonomy and SEO
Label selection and user experience
What’s will resonate best with your users?
Search thesaurus
Ensure appropriate query expansion
Popular geographic references
“Las Vegas” vs “Sin City”
“Detroit” vs “Motor City”
Acronyms
“FBI” and “Federal Bureau of Investigation”
“SAT” and “Scholastic Achievement Test” or “Scholastic Aptitude Test”
42

Misspellings
Important for on-site search
“did you mean…”
May be a rich source of additional traffic
Not recommended for inclusion in pagetext (do not intentionally misspell words)
Plan carefully and be creative
E.G. “blue-ray” vs “blu-ray”
43

Term Proximity & Placement
The closer together terms appear, the more closely related they are deemed
Word order can matter
Special formatting of terms in page content places a slightly higher importance on the word or phrase itself
Page headlines (<h1> through <h5>)
Bolding & italicizing
Link text
44

Related Terminology
Identification of supporting words or phrases that should be used in conjunction with preferred terms
Used to enhance and support the overall theme of the page by pulling together a tightly related topic
E.G. LEED
Acronym for Leadership in Energy & Environmental Design
Key themes include:
Training, Accreditation, Certification, Exams
Construction, Building, Architecture, Homes, Design
Green, Energy, Rating, Sustainability
45

The Importance of Metadata
HTML elements that provide structured metadata about a web page (page source)
Key attributes to consider include the page title (<title>) and the meta description (<meta name=“description>)
Often forgotten or neglected
Negatively affect the user experience
46
<title>Hasbro Network</title><meta name="Description" content="“ />
<meta name="Keywords" content="“ />

The Importance of Metadata
Opportunity to speak directly to potential visitors
When done right, click-through rates increase
47
<title>Enjoy Poker Online With PartyPoker.com - Play Holdem, Omaha and More!</title> <meta name="Description" content=“Play online poker at PartyPoker.com. You'll find Texas Hold'em, Omaha, Omaha Hi/Lo, 7 Card Stud & 7 Card Stud Hi/Lo. Huge Poker Tournaments and a Free Poker School. Choose the free poker software download or our new no download play in your browser poker game.“ />
<meta name="Keywords" content=" poker, online poker, play poker, poker room, poker game, video poker, internet poker, texasholdem, poker rules, poker school, poker tournaments, free poker, download, partypoker, party poker, partypoker.com“ />

Alignment of Terminology
48
I’d like to pick up some new accessories for my PlayStation 3
Not sure where to look so let’s do a search to see what’s out there
Just saw an advertisement from Best Buy for PlayStation 3 accessories
“PlayStation 3 Accessories”
“PlayStation 3 Accessories”

A Little SEO Knowledge Can Be Dangerous
Don’t over do it!
There’s no point in over-optimizing your site to obtain traffic that is not targeted
Might get you more visits in the short term, but at what cost?
Goal – attract qualifiedvisitors
49

It Can Be a Delicate Balance
Oftentimes there’s a trade-off between optimization, taxonomy and the user experience
Long labels can cause navigation to wrap or be hidden from view
Repetition of terminology reduces ability to scan
Always consider the end-user perspective
Research both terminology and related websites
50

Sources For Keyword Research
51
Search Logs

52
Navigation Labels
Header Tags
Title Tag
Page Content
External Link Text
Internal
Link Text

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Primary or Target Keyword
Supporting Terminology
Includes words and phrases that often appear in conjunction with the primary keyword

Summary
Taxonomy represents the internal perspective
Drives the customer experience while on the site
SEO represents the external perspective
Influences how people find a site in the first place
The alignment of perspectives
Search essentially becomes a portal to your site by presenting a multitude of unique access points directly to relevant content at the exact moment in time when someone is searching for you
Enhances the user experience by enabling findability at both the macro and micro levels
54

Additional Resources
Communities of Practice
Taxonomy: www.finance.groups.yahoo.com/group/TaxoCoP
SharePoint IA: www.tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/SharePointIACoP
Search: www.tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/SearchCoP
Upcoming Webinars
Taxonomy Community of Practice series: www.earley.com/webinars
Technology Showcase series :www.earley.com/webinars/technology-showcase
Jumpstarts: www.earley.com/webinars/jumpstarts
55

About Earley & Associates
56
Focus: Information Architecture (“IA”) Services
Founded: 1994
Personnel: Twenty core team consultants, plus a network of other top industry experts
ECM and KM experts
taxonomy specialists
search experts
information architects
usability professionals
technology consultants
business process experts
Headquarters: Boston, MA
Consulting Philosophy:
Organizing Principles based on business context and goals
Four Pillars - People, Content, Process, and Technology

Core Capabilities
Strategy
Content Management
Enterprise
Search,
Portal Design,
Collaboration
Website
Navigation,
Search &
SEO
Program Management
Business Analysis /
User Research
Taxonomy,
Metadata, IA
& Usability
Digital Asset
Management
Records Management
Technology Selection
Implementation Support
Workflow Management
Rights
Management
Socialization & Training
Security & Privacy Management
Governance
Success Metrics
57

Information Organization and Access Courses
AIIM Master Certification in IOA
4-day classes being held in:
Chicago: July 26th – 29th
Toronto: August 9th – 12th
Washington, DC: September 13th – 16th
San Francisco: September 20th – 23rd
Houston: October 18th – 21st
Course Descriptions and Registration at: www.earley.com/training/aiim-courses
58

Seth Earley
seth@earley.com
781-820-8080
Follow me on twitter: sethearley
Connect with me on LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/sethearley
Jeff Carr
jeff@earley.com
780-819-7275
Follow me on Twitter: siftonpark
Connect with me on LinkedIn:
www.linkedin.com/in/siftonpark
Questions?
59
www.earley.com

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Taxonomy and seo sla 05-06-10(jc)

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