How do you visualize website structure
-
How do you visualize a website structure in terms of (categories of) pages and interlinking. I use such visuals for discussing what you are actually doing now and what can be improved. I have made visuals I few times myself (basically making boxes representing categories of pages and lines representing internal links), but I found that I soon ran into a scheme of huge proportions and needed more paper and more time. Appreciate your thoughts!
-
DYNO Mapper is great at visualizing a website's structure. It is the best Sitemap Generator that I have used because it also performs a content audit and includes Google Analytics integration. It's pretty sweet how you can sort and filter pages based on Google Analytics metrics. If you are looking for a great discovery and planning tool I would give it a try.
-
I played around with Cytoscape and I'd definitely be interested of the spreadsheet as well!
-
Online-Tool diagramly (free) You can Save it as XML, JPG, PNG and SVG.
Or Lovely Charts (not free), but you can put in text-Sitemaps for a "Autovisualisation". -
I print it out and lay it out on a large table in the office. Just seeing it visually lets me get to grips with it a lot easier than scrolling through unconnected pages on a screen.
Print small and get a big table and you can fit a large sitemap there
Get a lot of A4s and some scissors and tape and you will be surprised how much better your understanding is by the time you've finished
-
I'm a big fan of Smart draw but just recently had a colleague share a chart with me via Google Docs which appeared to work very well for creating a flow chart and mapping out site structure.
-
-
Open Office Draw is free and has a series of flow chart icons but it's a manual job and takes a bit of getting used to (price is right though). Anything like this falls apart for larger sites though as you would be there all week.
Would love to know if there is a firm favourite amongst people as it's certainly helpful to visualise interlinking and structure.
-
Damien, I'd be interested in taking a look at this as well, if you're OK sending it over to me. We used to use a profiler program that now seems to be dead.
-
You can also download a trial of Black Widow - http://download.cnet.com/1770-20_4-0-.html?query=black+widow&searchtype=downloads&tag=opensearch
Once you've scanned a site, it builds a site architecture that looks like Windows Explorer. You can take screen shots and place them in your documents as needed.
-
Glad to.
I'm in the middle of rewriting the macro at the moment as my first attempt was a tad on the slow side. I can skype it across to you when I finish it (today or tomorrow).
-
This sounds like a great idea. I'm certainly interested in seeing how you handle the Xenu data if you're willing to share!
-
I'm currently using a combination of (mainly free) apps to map my company's website to visualise link flow and indentify isolated content that hasn't been correctly linked in.
I start with a site crawl using Xenu's Link Sleuth from which I can export a list of all pages as well as a list of all the links. I import the two lists into Excel where the data gets cleaned and additional information extracted by a macro. The final step is to import the link and page data in Cytoscape which performs the visualisation.
Don't be fooled by the biological focus of Cytoscape, it will work with any data as long as it's broken down into nodes (pages) and edges (links). It incorporates a number of visualisation algorithms, and allows you to filter a selection of nodes which can then be copied to a subnetwork and visualised separately.
It handles our small site of 2k pages and 50k internal links with ease, and I know a geneticist who uses it to map networks of over 7k genes with some 300k interactions.
If you're interested, I can provide a copy of the spreadsheet I use for manipulating the raw Xenu data.
-
ProtoShare.com is the best tool of that kind for me
-
Thanks Nick, really handy, appreciate it.
-
I like using post-its, but that can get ridiculous as well. Here is one of my faves for mind-mapping, and it's completely free: https://bubbl.us -
-
Apart from everything mentioned already - bubbl.us is a great free online tool that lets you save and export your visualisations.
-
You might want to check out this link, which works for new versions of Omigraffe.
Let me know what you think.
-
I hadn't noticed that - shame, could have been interesting if they kept up development.
-
I checked out WriteMaps, and it was very very nice for small sites. It is a pity that it does not seem to be maintained anymore. Last communication from the creator seems to be from 2009.
-
I checked out WriteMaps, and it was very very nice for small sites. It is a pity that it does not seem to be maintained anymore. Last communication from the creator seems to be from 2009.
-
Smart Draw is seriously awesome; just downloaded for a 7 day free trial. I used Mockingbird in the past but SD looking way better now.
-
I'm a little late to the party (just trying out the new Q&A for the first time).
I was looking for a solution myself yesterday and found two free ones that, while definitely not as full-featured as those shared by ninjamarketer, might do the trick.
WriteMaps is a nifty tool (free to use) that looks to have some potential.
SlickMap is an HTML/CSS template you can use to add up to three levels of hierarchy, and it looks pretty sharp (though it's clearly not as quick/convenient as some of the other tools).
-
I use Visio to start with and when I go in to more details in terms of pages, I use https://gomockingbird.com/
This allows me to share the drawings easily.
-
Another vote for Smartdraw!
-
I'll use the mac software omnigraffle to chart out my site. Also someone came up with a cool applescript that will take a regular xml sitemap and turn it into omnigraffle.
-
Great.Thanks
-
Sure. Your welcome.
-
Thanks Sameer, I will check these out.
-
I have used PowerMapper and am relatively happy with it. It fails miserably on large scale websites. I've spent days researching website structure visualistion and found that there are no rubust industry strength solutions out there available to general community. We're in the process of writing our own software for that reason.
-
Hey Jos: I use a vector based drawing program (CorelDraw) and draw boxes with lines like you. I can highlight main pages by border thickness and colors.
It's probably not nearly as elegant as Sameer's suggestions, but I've used it for so many years, it's as comfortable as a pair of old jeans
-
I second the smartdraw software.
I've been happy with it because you can do several other things with it.
-
Thanks Sameer, I'll have to check these out
-
Great question. I tend to just map it out by hand categories / sub categories / products/services but I can see how that can get quite daunting on very large sites.
-
I would assume you are referring to site architecture. If this is the case then there are several good tools in market that are used by dev / designers to map out the site artchitecture or sitemaps.
Microsoft visio http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/visio/
Power mapper http://www.powermapper.com/
Smart draw http://www.smartdraw.com/
I have used smart draw for flow charts and found it lot easier to use.
Hope this helps.
Thanks
Sameer
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Is there a way to host my website.com/BLOG URL PATH from a different host than my main website.com host?
Is there a way to host my website.com/BLOG URL PATH from a different host than my main website.com host? Is it accomplish-able with DNS settings or are there other considerations that might lead to complications doing this? Specifically, we are investigating install WordPress on a dedicated host, JUST to power the blog for our main website, but our main website is on an internal proprietary hosting and CMS. So basically we're trying to host: website.com --> OFF OF CURRENT INTERNAL HOSTING website.com/blog/ --> OFF OF THIRD PARTY HOSTING (USING WORDPRESS) I know this is a technical question beyond the scope of SEO, but I'm figuring there are members of the community that may have tried this already so I'm floating it here. Many thanks! Cheers.
Web Design | | AlexVelazquez0 -
Website Form Doesn't Work for Visitors from Google Search App
I've got a strange issue where if visitor is viewing a website from within the Google Search App, the app doesn't seem to be able to handle online forms. The form relies users on entering data, which is then POSTed to an external booking engine site. Normally this works fine, except when Google Search App is acting as the browser, the post payload is empty and the URL breaks. We're a bit stumped as to how to move forward. So far the only lead is that Android users can override having the app behave as a browser - but doesn't seem like iOS users can. Any additional ideas/tips are welcome here - thanks. 🙂
Web Design | | mirabile0 -
URL Structure's Effect on SEO
Hello all, I have a client who currently has a very poor URL structure. As it stands, their URLs are formatted in the following manner: http://www.domain.com/category/subcategory/page In all my years of SEO, however, I have always tried to implement the following format: http://www.domain.com/category/page The web designer for this particular project has been very reluctant to change the structure for obvious reasons, but I'm convinced that by modifying the URL structure, SEO will improve. I am correct in thinking this? Likewise, if I am able to get the URL structure changed, what do I need to look out for to make sure we don't lose any traction for our keyword terms? Any and all insight/suggestions is greatly appreciated. Thanks for reading!
Web Design | | maxcarnage0 -
SEO strategy for UK / US websites
Hi, We currently have a UK-focused site on www.palmatin.com ; We're now targeting the North American market as well, but the contents of the site need to be different from UK. One option was to create another domain for the NA market but I assume it would be easier to rank with palmatin.com though. What would you suggest to do, if a company is targeting two different countries in the same language? thanks, jaan
Web Design | | JaanMSonberg0 -
What to Look for in a Magento Website Developer?
I am considering moving 1 of our sites to a Magento e-commerce platform. If I went down this route we would be keen to find someone who we can hire in-house. However I have never hired a web developer before. What should a developer with experience of launching and building Magento-based e-commerce websites have on their CV? What should I be looking for in terms of knowledge? Any help or advice welcome!
Web Design | | DHS_SH0 -
Mobile website strategy
Hello all! This question is about mobile websites. Any suggestions are welcomed. The facts: We have recently built a mobile website for our business using the separate mobile urls (parallel mobile website on a m. sub-domain). We are in the service industry and while our customers are most of the time on the go, it is important for them to find the price and order the service as fast and easy as possible. The redirect from desktop to mobile happens when customers are accessing the website with a mobile devices and it's done automatically. The mobile version does not have any content and serves only as a search and order function. The SEO has been made for the desktop website only and we are ranking really well for all competitive keywords in our niche. We want to keep the mobile website simple and clean so we are not planning to add any content on it.The questions: Since we are not planning to have much content on the mobile website, do we need to do any SEO for it? If yes, why? What are the benefits? Should we add content on the mobile website and why? Is there any down-side from an SEO perspective due to the fact that the website redirects to the mobile version? How are the inbound links going to behave in this case? Do we need to link these two websites although there is no risk about duplicate content? (links, canonical tags, sitemaps) Will the mobile website take advantage of the link building made for the desktop version? Should we allow the mobile website to be indexed having the fact that this is just a search & book tool? (at the moment it is blocked via robots.txt) Thanks for reading, looking forward to your answers.
Web Design | | echo10 -
Need help in website URL Structure
I have been working on a brand new website currently it is live but I have disallow Googlebots temporarily as I dint want any negative impact. The business of the site is to generate leads , they install and sell Stairlifts and used Stairlifts. There are two main categories New Stairlifts and Reconditioned Stairlifts Currently the URL for new Stairlifts is : http://willowstairlifts.co.uk/stairlifts/ and for Reconditioned Stairlifts is: http://willowstairlifts.co.uk/reconditioned-stairlifts/ My concerns are that the word Stairlifts is mentioned twice in the urls so is it going to have a negative impact or panda penalty? I am thinking of changing them to http://willowstairlifts.co.uk/new/ and the product pages to display as http://willowstairlifts.co.uk/new/brooks/ Currently its http://willowstairlifts.co.uk/stairlifts/brooks/ Same with reconditioned Stairlifts I like to change it to : http://willowstairlifts.co.uk/reconditioned Also its product pages to http://willowstairlifts.co.uk/reconditioned/brooks/ As currently its http://willowstairlifts.co.uk/reconditioned-stairlifts/brooks/ Thanks
Web Design | | conversiontactics0 -
Need to rebuild client's flash website
I am working with their web designer and need to figure out a way to rebuild their site which is currently all in flash. I was wondering if there was a way to do this without spending a ton of time in completely re-doing the site from scratch.
Web Design | | awalker840