SEO Isn’t Rocket Science: It’s Library Science

By Chris Bell | December 19, 2013

The World Wide Web has been likened to a vast library encompassing the world’s collected information. This analogy is imperfect, of course. Users of this peculiar “library” have to put up with garish signs in the library directing them to the wrong books (cybersquatters), mobs of unruly people yelling in the reading rooms (spammers), spontaneous parties and chatter springing up in the lobby (social media), blinking ads on the shelves hawking self-help books (display media), and paid guides that bodily drag you to the books they want you to buy (PPC).

And yet what librarians actually do – which is to catalog, index, and organize information in a way to meet the informational needs of human beings – bears a close parallel to what good SEOs do. This work isn’t dramatic, rockstar-like, or “rocket-sciencey,” but it’s important – I’d say essential.

Good librarians do these things:

• They keep their books (content) well organized.
• They understand and make use of taxonomies (categories).
• They do everything they can to ensure ease of use by library patrons (usability).

Taxonomy is a fancy word that pertains to the practice and science of classification. From an SEO point of view, you want to classify the content on your site, organize those classifications, and make it easy for your users to find this content. You want the site structure to be easily indexable by search engine spiders. Taxonomies (that is, content classifications) should be top-of-mind at the very beginning of website creation, because sites that have sections that are classified based on general categories of content and function are both easier to lay out and more easily indexed by the search engines – much like a well laid-out library.

Here are some librarian-inspired ideas that can help when planning out or updating your site –

• Break out categories of content. Determine what kinds of content on your site you want your users to see, the role each plays in your sales funnel, and how you ultimately want your users to convert.
• Usability, usability, usability. Your site is useless if users can’t get to where they need to go. Attention needs to be paid to good old-fashioned user friendly web design. Don’t cut corners – you wouldn’t on your house. While changes in technologies come and go, solid, usable web design will pay off in increased conversion rates for years. Make sure that navigation functions easily and well, clearly label buttons, make good use of whitespace, fonts, and text flow.
• Keep it modular. By carefully segregating off content from function-oriented sections of your site, you can easily slide new sections of content in and out as your content changes and develops. When it comes time to change your site, as your products and services change, you want to make those changes as seamless as possible.
• Keep it simple. A simple site geography, and the maintenance of a page count as low as possible not only makes it easier for the search engines to index your site, it reduces the chances of duplicating content. While duplicate content isn’t entirely bad, keeping a lid on it makes sense from a simple labor and work flow point of view.
• Keywords+user intent=Categories. Marcus Arcabascio from our SEO team tells us that keywords are essential to determining what your categories and therefore taxonomies will be.  Don’t trust your intuition! Keyword research is essential to determine what your customers are really looking for, and awareness of this intent should inform the architecture of your site. (This is part of a 16-step process that we use when conducting SEO for our clients.)

I frankly think that if more SEOs thought and behaved like diligent librarians, instead of slashing ninjas, preening rock stars, or button-pushing rocket scientists, the Web would be a much better place. Library Science might not be particularly sexy, but its principles are sound, and the job of a librarian is very similar to much of the job that SEOs – at least the good ones – actually do every day.