A Data-First
Approach to
Building a
Website
Paige Hobart
SEO Manager
Unily

Contents
@PaigeHobart
What is an SEO’s role in building a website?
What is an IA?
Building a website data-first: Case Studies
Building a website data-first: The Process
Recap
01
02
03
04
05

What is an SEO’s role
in a website build?
@PaigeHobart

What is an SEO’s role in a web-build?
@PaigeHobart
Whilst we of course can do the whole thing ourselves
because we are talented, awesome, capable SEO’s…

What is an SEO’s role in a web-build?
@PaigeHobart
I would argue that our role as SEO’s is;

What is an SEO’s role in a web-build?
@PaigeHobart
I would argue that our role as SEO’s is;
a) To ‘build’ the website on paper -
Essentially the planning of what content you are going to need and
where it needs to live hierarchically, in order to target the keywords
you want to be visible for. The site IA.

What is an SEO’s role in a web-build?
@PaigeHobart
I would argue that our role as SEO’s is;
a) To ‘build’ the website on paper -
Essentially the planning of what content you are going to need and
where it needs to live hierarchically, in order to target the keywords
you want to be visible for. The site IA.
b) To ensure SEO compliance -
Throughout the design, build & go-live, making sure designers
aren't relying on ‘read more’ buttons, and that the devs make sure if
they’re using JS that its accessible, etc. etc.

What is an SEO’s role in a web-build?
@PaigeHobart
I would argue that our role as SEO’s is;
a) To ‘build’ the website on paper -
Essentially the planning of what content you are going to need and
where it needs to live hierarchically, in order to target the keywords
you want to be visible for. The site IA.
b) To ensure SEO compliance -
Throughout the design, build & go-live, making sure designers
aren't relying on ‘read more’ buttons, and that the devs make sure if
they’re using JS that its accessible, etc. etc.

What is an IA??
@PaigeHobart

@PaigeHobart
Taxonomy?
Website Structure?
Internal Architecture?
Information Architecture?
I’m sure everybody calls it something different,
and with good reason.
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What is an IA?

@PaigeHobart
I like <3 Information Architecture <3
Because I’m mapping all the information my
website is going to have, and where it sits
within the architecture of the site.
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What is an IA?

@PaigeHobart
To develop an Information Architecture from an
SEO perspective, I’m going to create a blueprint of:
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What is an SEO IA?

@PaigeHobart
To develop an Information Architecture from an
SEO perspective, I’m going to create a blueprint of:
● All the keywords you want to target
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What is an SEO IA?

@PaigeHobart
To develop an Information Architecture from an
SEO perspective, I’m going to create a blueprint of:
● All the keywords you want to target
● All the pages you’ll need to target those
keywords
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What is an SEO IA?

@PaigeHobart
To develop an Information Architecture from an
SEO perspective, I’m going to create a blueprint of:
● All the keywords you want to target
● All the pages you’ll need to target those
keywords
● The hierarchy & parent-child relationships
of the pages we’re creating
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What is an SEO IA?

@PaigeHobart
To develop an Information Architecture from an
SEO perspective, I’m going to create a blueprint of:
● All the keywords you want to target
● All the pages you’ll need to target those
keywords
● The hierarchy & parent-child relationships
of the pages we’re creating
● The ‘roles’ of different areas of the site
e.g. blog versus resource versus product page
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What is an SEO IA?
https://bit.ly/mapping-website-content

@PaigeHobart
What is an NOT an IA?
It’s important to note that an IA is not the same as a navigation.

@PaigeHobart
Sisters not Twins

@PaigeHobart
What is an NOT an IA?
It’s important to note that an IA is not the same as a navigation.
This can often be a tripping point in the mind of the client, project manager or developer. Whilst an IA will 100% feed into a
navigation - they have additional, non-seo considerations like UX, CRO and even legal.
Nav 1 Nav 2 Nav 3 Nav 4 Nav 5
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Page 2
Page 3
Page 4
Page 5
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@PaigeHobart
Your navigation is like your shop window
Dresses
Accessories
Shoes
Tops
Jumpers
Jeans

@PaigeHobart
Your IA is like your stockroom
Mens+Hat+Red
Black+Boots+Size 5
Patterned+Jumper+Size M
Red+Oven Gloves
Womens+Socks+Multipack
Mens+Black+Leather+Belt
Red+Dress+Size 12
Black+Leather+Backpack
Christmas+Slippers+Size 4
Dark Blue+Jeans+Size 10
Fabric Face Masks
Blue+Leather+Shoes Size 6

Building a website data-first
@PaigeHobart

@PaigeHobart

@PaigeHobart
A few case studies: B2B Software
75% increase in clicks to the site
+ Crawl budget & site health issues reduced exponentially
Before After
*Visuals made via Screaming Frog’s ‘Force-Directed Directory Tree Diagram’

@PaigeHobart
A few case studies: B2B SaaS
8,667
URLs produced by multiple internal divisions
230
Optimised landing pages
5
New industry categories to target
Into
Plus
200% increase in sessions to a core division
+ 21% increase in total sessions YoY (pre & post restructure)

@PaigeHobart
A few case studies: B2C Finance
640
Blog, FAQs & Other pages
127
SEO-optimised landing pages
46
New SEO opportunities
Into
Plus
106% YoY growth in main site traffic
+ Consolidation of 640 pages with thin content into 127 optimized URLs

@PaigeHobart
A few case studies: Unily!
Unily Platform Feature Pages
550% increase in Impressions
& 60% increase in Clicks (so far!)
+ 5 new SEO opportunities

Building a website data-first:
The Process
@PaigeHobart

@PaigeHobart
A data-led process to drive performance
1. Keyword Research
2. Ranking Analysis
3. Competition Analysis
4. Categorisation & Consolidation
5. Planning & Mapping
6. Content Briefing/Writing
7. Technical Planning & Requirements
8. Go live & Monitor
This is an 8-step process that I’ve used many times to produce IA maps for both new websites & existing website restructures

@PaigeHobart
A data-led process to drive performance
1. Keyword Research
2. Ranking Analysis
3. Competition Analysis
4. Categorisation & Consolidation
5. Planning & Mapping
6. Content Briefing/Writing
7. Technical Planning & Requirements
8. Go live & Monitor
Steps 1-4 create your on-paper website with keyword mapping and data to support your decision making:

@PaigeHobart
A data-led process to drive performance
1. Keyword Research
2. Ranking Analysis
3. Competition Analysis
4. Categorisation & Consolidation
5. Planning & Mapping
6. Content Briefing/Writing
7. Technical Planning & Requirements
8. Go live & Monitor
Steps 5-8 outline the process of getting the IA from paper to a live website (from just the SEO perspective):

Building a website data-first:
Part 1
@PaigeHobart

@PaigeHobart
1. Keyword Research
This first step is vital to the rest of the process and provides the foundation on which we will build both structure and labelling conventions.
It’s not uncommon to find that companies get stuck in using ‘internal’ language rather that the terms people are using to search online.
bit.ly/good-keyword-slides

@PaigeHobart
1. Keyword Research
In the slides linked there is a separate 4-stage process to doing keyword research (yes I love a process)
bit.ly/good-keyword-slides
Keyword Gathering:
- GSC
- GA
- Product Managers
- Brand immersion day
Keyword Expansion:
- Keyword Planner
- GA
- On-page analysis
- Competitor analysis

@PaigeHobart
1. Keyword Research
2. Ranking Analysis
If you’ve followed how to do GOOD keyword research, you should have a nice list of keywords grouped into rough topics.
This helps us identify opportunities for the new site to gain more visibility in areas with higher search volume. Assess where the site is doing well
versus where it could be doing better. Also use SERP Feature data to expand your keyword list to include PAA’s and Related Searches.

@PaigeHobart
1. Keyword Research
3. Competition Analysis
Using ranking data you can also Identifying where internal and external competition exists. As SEO’s we can then provide short term fixes or feed
recommendations into the longer term build – this is often dependent on wider impacts & business priorities.

@PaigeHobart
1. Keyword Research
3. Competition Analysis
Looking outside of the direct ecosystem - looking a competitors is a great way of starting to look at gaps in content.
Purplebricks Keyword Overlap Prime Location Keyword Overlap Zoopla Keyword Overlap

@PaigeHobart
This is where we finally combine all of the data into a mega spreadsheet with a categorised hierarchy. Every keyword should be mapped to a
page-level tag. Each ‘page’ should sit within a hierarchical structure.
4. Categorisation & Consolidation
Lots more data
hidden here

@PaigeHobart
1. Keyword Research
4. Categorisation & Consolidation
Use logic, search volume, cpc, and other data to decide on parental hierarchy e.g. ‘car insurance’ is parent of ‘under 18’s car insurance’.

@PaigeHobart
Categorisation & consolidation
1. Keyword Research
2. Ranking Analysis
3. Competition Analysis
4. Categorisation & Consolidation
5. Planning & Mapping
6. Content Briefing/Writing
7. Technical Planning & Requirements
8. Go live & Monitor
So now we have our on-paper website with keyword mapping and data to support your decision making:

@PaigeHobart
Planning & Keyword Mapping
1. Keyword Research
2. Ranking Analysis
3. Competition Analysis
4. Categorisation & Consolidation
5. Planning & Mapping
6. Content Briefing/Writing
7. Technical Planning & Requirements
8. Go live & Monitor
Now we have to get that plan into reality!

Building a website data-first:
Part 2
@PaigeHobart

@PaigeHobart
1. Keyword Research
This keyword map you created should have ‘ranking url’ in there. That’s the starting point of our URL mapping, but it’s definitely not everything in the website….
5. Planning & Mapping

@PaigeHobart
1. Keyword Research
If you’re dealing with a small site, use Screaming Frog to crawl all the pages you may have missed. If it's enterprise-level, you may need to use
something like Oncrawl to find all of your pages.
5. Planning & Mapping

@PaigeHobart
1. Keyword Research
Once you’ve got your full site crawl and liaised with respective teams to bring in content like legal, cookies, and other pages, needed for the website and the
business to function, you can vlookup in your page data by URL to spot the gaps e.g. security will remain and move into the new site:
5. Planning & Mapping

@PaigeHobart
1. Keyword Research
If it’s a MASSIVE website, then you may need to make some rules (e.g. product URLs stay the same) or map everything based on ‘value’
e.g. GSC clicks, impressions, GA sessions and page views for all channels (not just SEO).
5. Planning & Mapping

@PaigeHobart
1. Keyword Research
You can also bring in other data to sense check your work e.g. top generic keyword by URL from GSC + mapped page
5. Planning & Mapping

@PaigeHobart
1. Keyword Research
5. Planning & Mapping

@PaigeHobart
1. Keyword Research
5. Planning & Mapping
You crunched all the data! You mapped all the things!

6. Content Briefing/Writing
@PaigeHobart
But now someone needs to write all those pages you mapped…

6. Content Briefing/Writing
@PaigeHobart
Now we know what pages exist in our new world order, we need to get the content written! If you’re lucky you’ll have a lot of content to ‘lift and shift’
into your new structure. But we may need to create page briefs for copywriters to write all of the copy for the pages we’ve mapped. Some of this will
be re-writes, or copy consolidation, whilst some might be brand new.

7. Technical Planning & Requirements
@PaigeHobart
To get the copy we’ve written onto the website we have a couple of options:
Site migration(s)
Option 1 - live site
We gradually work through the consolidation
of URLs and content and make these
changes iteratively to the live site(s).
Option 2 - staging site
We add all the new copy to staging
and go live all at once
1
2

7. Technical Planning & Requirements
@PaigeHobart
Option 2 - If you can pull together an army of copywriters, CMS copy-pasters, and developers to get this new site written and built all at once - DO IT!
25/03/2021

I have a confession…
@PaigeHobart

7. Technical Planning & Requirements
@PaigeHobart
Option 1: However, the likelihood is you’ll need to work through this iteratively to make sure you have something to show for the amount of work
that goes into this website restructure. Page by page, you will evolve the site into your ideal IA:
Write Page Brief Write/Edit Content Review content Publish Page
Map Redirects
Create page template in
CMS with schema
Add final content &
imagery to draft CMS page
Upload redirects &
update inlinks
*Simplified view
Content
Tech
Grab keywords, existing
URLs and future URLs
Set up live performance
tracking
Add critical dates to report
e.g. go live date, post live edits
Track changes, make
optimisations
Reporting

8. Go live & Monitor
@PaigeHobart
Whether you go with option 1 or 2 you will need solid
reporting in place to know what has gone well and what
might not have.
As with any site migration there are a number of steps
to follow, but that would be a whole other talk.
In this example I have a page of reporting in Looker
Studio for each page I have updated, added or
consolidated. I can quickly spot which content has been
an instant success, or which content needs some
additional love and support.

Recap!
@PaigeHobart

@PaigeHobart
A data-led process to drive performance
1. Keyword Research
2. Ranking Analysis
3. Competition Analysis
4. Categorisation & Consolidation
5. Planning & Mapping
6. Content Briefing/Writing
7. Technical Planning & Requirements
8. Go live & Monitor
You now know the 8-step process!

@PaigeHobart
To summarise
IA and Navigation
are linked but
separate things
Combine all data
sources to provide
insightful &
future-proof IA
structures
Treat this work like a
site migration, even if
it’s only the IA that
changes
2 3
1

Thank You!