Site architecture encompasses issues around duplicate content due to features on the site that might generate multiple versions of the same page, the importance of the page layout, incorporation of things like advertisements that might raise spam flags and use of attributions on link tags to help search engines better understand your website.

Before the SEO audit we were already well aware of things like using canonical links to pages to tell search engines which page has authority when more than one version exists and had already implemented many changes both at the page level and in the .htaccess file.

However, Reliable SEO was able to take things further with the following suggestions:

1) Add 301 redirects for index.html to the root of folders, in navigation and at main levels.

The idea here is to not have situations where a search engine will think that https://www.canadaone.com and https://www.canadaone.com/index.html are different sites.

This does not only apply to your homepage; also look in your navigation to see if you have pages that use shortened links (e.g. about/) and then in other places link to the full pathname (e.g. about/index.html).

Be very careful when doing a 301 redirect and always check immediately after adding one at the root level to ensure that it does not create an internal server error or put your website into an unrecoverable loop.

2) Put more text above the fold.

The SEO audit identified an increased importance of where text-based content appears on the page, noting that it is now very important that more text appear ‘above the fold’, which is everything a user can see on the screen without having to scroll down.

More specifically, having text in the first 500-550 pixels of the screen is important.

This is based in part on Matt Cutt’s Page layout algorithm improvement blog post, where he noted that Google has heard complaints from users who click on a result and find it difficult to find actual content due to the ads on the page.

Google has provided a browser sizing tool (although they note that this link will soon be unavailable as the tool will be moved to become part of Google Analytics’ In-Page Analysis Report) that lets you see what portion of your website is visible to most users.

Reliable SEO found that CanadaOne has very little text in the first 510 pixels of our page and recommended that we try to minimize the graphics in order to have text in this zone.

Yet there are a few things on this point that concern us.

Our site has a lot of information about the screen resolutions of visitors to our site. The smaller range, 1024 x 768 pixels, represents 11.6% of our users while most of the remainder have screen resolutions of 1280 or higher.

It could be argued that perhaps users with a screen resolution of 1024 or lower simply leave CanadaOne because the experience is unpleasant. To investigate that possibility we cross-referenced our numbers with W3Cschools.com, which indicated that 13 per cent of users had screen resolutions of 1024x768 in January of this year.

From a designer’s viewpoint, we want to create pages that will be enjoyed by real people, not robots. The idea that the designer’s palette will now be restricted by a robot’s idea of what is content and whether or not this appears above the fold is concerning.

Our actions at this time have been to maintain the current design, add descriptive text to the homepage above the bigbox ad and monitor the situation to see if other interventions help restore our search position.

3) Minimize ads, especially above the fold.

The number and placement of ads on the page has been an issue for some time and Reliable were concerned that our larger banner, along with two big boxes and a skyscraper ad on most pages, as well as a featured business from the franchise directory, were part of the reason we were being penalized by Panda.

This is another sore point, as a site like CanadaOne depends on ad sales in order to generate the revenue needed to continue writing great stories, shooting videos and generally creating compelling content for our audience.

Major advertisers prefer to buy standard ad units where they can create a campaign and deploy the creative across multiple sites. The Internet Advertising Bureau (IAB) standards set out fixed sizes and specifications for digital ads in its Display Advertising Guidelines.

The leaderboard, at 728x90 pixels, is one of the more popular sizes and the newest ad standards include the “billboard”, which is 970 x 250 pixels wide.

Which creates a catch-22. People turn to Google first to take them to important content online, content that in turn normally needs to be supported by a revenue stream. The search step is critical, yet so too is the revenue. So if the two are at odds with one another, where search punishes sites that have ad units outside of where it deems to be acceptable, the advertisers choose not to advertise on sites unless they offer flexible ad units that conform with the IAB Standards: we reach a very difficult impasse.

For now we will trim the ads down to just three per page, but this latest change might push our website - and most likely others as well - to shift towards a more integrated advertising play on a sponsorship basis.

4) Add a Google Video Sitemap.

Adding a Google Video Sitemap is key to getting videos into Google’s universal index. Reliable SEO noted that CanadaOne does not currently have one and we will add one after other SEO adjustments have been made.

5) Investigate and use appropriate micro-formats.

Micro-formats are a set of open data formats where a group of people have agreed that a particular format has meaning. These attributes can be added to things like link tags to provide instructions to search engines and others.

For example, adding the attribute rel=nofollow enabled us to stop search engines following the previous and next links on our events calendar.

Similarly, a format that has been highly recommended by Reliable SEO is the rel=author tag, which can help address concerns about attribution of ownership and origin of content, when information is scraped or stolen.

There are a few different ways to implement the rel=author page, but in essence the author needs to establish a Google+ page and then there needs to be linking from the author to a website and that website back to the author’s Google+ page in the format outlined by Google. You can see an example of it on this crowdfunding video interview by CanadaOne’s co-founder and editor, Julie King.

Moving forward, CanadaOne plans to invite all authors to have their articles linked to their Google+ page. However, as our library of articles has been built over 15 years this will not be a fast process. Reliable SEO has recommended this as one of the most important things we can do to address the problem with scrapers and attribution.

6) Use recommended HTML document structures.

As a site that goes back to early 1998, CanadaOne has grown organically and there are still some pockets of legacy components to the site that one would not normally see on a website today. Decisions that we made in the late 90’s around things like the use of heading (H1, H2, H3, etc.) tags are no longer relevant and because of this there is a gap in how these tags are used.

Since our original approach would now be highly unexpected, we won’t go into detail around this point, other than to concur with Reliable SEO’s comments that our use of H1 tags is confusing in a 2012 context.

Recommended action(s) for other sites:

1. Make sure you aren’t accidentally presenting duplicate content by having multiple domains or filenames for the same content. Use the canonical link if you aren’t already. Use the rewrite rule in the .htaccess file to let search engines know if you have multiple domains for one website. Consider using 301 redirects where you have both foldername/ and foldername/index.html (or other filename).
   
2. Evaluate your designs to make sure important text is towards the top of the page, ideally in the top 510 pixels of the screen. If possible, try to include important text in the top portion of your webpages.
   
3. Look at the number of ads on your page and limit, with industry experts currently recommending a maximum of three per page.
   
4. Add a Google Video Sitemap if you publish video you would like included in the universal index.
   
5. Investigate and use appropriate micro-formats like the rel=nofollow and rel=author tags to help search engines better understand how to properly follow and attribute your content.
   
6. Use appropriate heading tags to help search engines understand the context and importance of information.

Page 1:Google Panda Report: Introduction

Page 2: Google Panda Report: Understanding How Google Views Duplicate or Thin Content

Page 3: Google Panda Report: Site Focus (previous)

Page 4: Google Panda Report: Site Architecture

Page 5: Google Panda Report: Site Clean-Up with Google Webmaster Tools (next)

Page 6: Google Panda Report: Negative SEO