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•    Information Architecture
  •    What is an information architect?
  •    How Wide is the Sea? Information Architects and SEO
  •    Information Architecture Articles
  •    Doors and Windows
•    Web Content Writing
•    Web Site Design
  •    Louisiana Web Design
  •    Louisiana Web Site Design
•    Category Management
  •    Keeping the previous structure intact
  •    Virtual Categories
  •    SEO+Categories
  •    One Single Irreducible Attribute
•    Search Engine Optimization
  •    What is SEO? (Search Engine Optimization)
  •    Choose a domain name
  •    Choosing Keywords
  •    Internal Link Structure
  •    SEO Using CSS
  •    URLs: Cleanliness is next to Google-iness.
  •    SEO: Science or Alchemy?
  •    Ascending the Pyramid: Building a successful SEO campaign
  •    Louisiana Web Promotion
•    Local Navigation
  •    Hide and Seek - The dilemma of dynamic content, load time and search engines.
•    Case Studies
  •    Antique China Website
•    Links/Resources

InformationArchiTECH Blog

Louisiana is a state with tremendous natural, cultural and artistic diversity.  It is also one that teems with commercial and technological innovation.  From the industrial economy of Lake Charles, to the thriving artistic communities of Lafayette and New Orleans, Louisiana has much to offer the people of its state, and the world at large. 

For years, Louisiana and its economy was a world unto itself.  As the world has changed, however, Lousiana businesses are having to adapt.  More and more Louisiana businesses are searching for ways to bring their unique products and services to the table of the global marketplace. 

The internet is the fastest and most cost-effective way to create exposure for the products and services of Louisiana businesses.  A presence on the Internet can open previously unimagined markets.  Properly designed web sites can place Louisiana companies on a much larger playing field, generating wider interest in local products and services than would otherwise be possible.

Because Louisiana is unique, there is a growing need for Louisiana web design companies with an intimate understanding of Louisiana culture.  Louisiana web designers face a two-fold challenge. 

1. Communicate the needs and interests of Louisiana businesses in a way that will be recognizable by Louisiana consumers, and
2. Communicate this same information to the rest of the world in such a way that it will be universally understood, while remaining true to the flavor of Louisiana culture.

There are many web design companies in Louisiana, but few who are up to the challenge of ensuring their clients information is “findable,” both to individuals in Louisiana and the larger world.   

Findability has both internal and external aspects, which a Louisiana web design company must take into consideration.  You want people to find your website, to be sure.  But once they have found it, you want to also make sure your website is designed in such a way that the person arriving on your site can quickly find whatever it is he or she is looking for, in two clicks or less.

• External Findability is accomplished with search engine optimization (SEO), which means getting your site to rank high in the search engines (Google, Yahoo, MSN) for relevant key phrases.
• Internal Findability is accomplished through the use of easy, intuitive navigational structures, logical category structures, clear web content writing and sophisticated search functionalities.

There are many Louisiana web design companies that can help you present your product or service in an attractive light, but few that are committed to making sure the right people will find what you are offering. 

Informationarchitech is one Louisiana web design and promotion firm with an emphasis on findability.  Our aim is to make the knowledge, products and services of our State “findable” in the larger, and ever expanding Web of information.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is a set of techniques and strategies for building a website (or modifying an existing one) such that its pages will appear in the top, natural results of search engines such as Google, Yahoo or MSN, for relevant key phrases.  If your  website sells toy fire trucks, then, an SEO campaign might focus upon getting your website to rank #1 whenever you type "toy fire trucks" in a search engine.

Don't you have to pay for that?

Yes and no.  SEO does not refer to paid listings, sometimes called "Sponsored Links," which usually appear in a designated section of the search results page.  In those cases, the more you pay the more prominently your ad will appear.  It is certainly one way to promote your website, and it is a strategy that has been successful for many people.  However, this is entirely different from SEO.

SEO refers to the natural results, in which the search engine has ranked web pages according to relevancy.  When you type "toy fire trucks," into Google, about six million results are returned.  The first page has ten natural listings.  The first web page that appears is one that Google's complex ranking algorithm has determined to be the most relevant for that phrase.   The second result  is the second most relevant, and so on.

Relevancy is determined by many factors, some known and others still kept secret by the engineers at Google and other companies.  The two most important factors, however, are content and back-links.  Web site content is the actual "text," or written material that composes the pages of your website.  Back-links are all of the instances in which another website links to yours.

So how do I make my website #1 in the natural results?

SEO is not easy.  Gaining a high ranking in the search engines is a long process that requires intense commitment and patience.  No matter what the nature of the product or servce you are offering, the chances are good that there is a lot of competition out there.  My personal rule of thumb is, if you want to rank #1, you must be #1.  If you want to rank #1 for lawn mowers, writing one page or even fifty pages about lawn mowers, using all the right phrases with the correct "word density ratio" may not be sufficient to gain that ranking . You must, quite simply, make your website the most relevant, informative and entertaining on the web for that search phrase.

If you want to rank for "lawn mowers," you had better be prepared to "write the book" on lawn mowers, research everything you possibly can about the subject, the history as well as the future, and build a large following of people who agree that, when it comes to "lawn mowers," your website says it all.

Building a successful SEO campaign.

Having said this, attaining a high ranking for whatever search phrases best describe your website is a worthwhile goal, and one that will require planning and some method by which your progress can be measured.  The one devised by informationarchitech for our clients (as well as our own websites) is called the "Key Term Pyramid."

To develop a "key term pyramid," and mark your progress, you are going to need two important tools that are staples of the SEO trade. 

The first is a key term search tool.   These are usually online programs that allow you to search the databases, or portions of the databases, used by major search engines that contain information about the phrases users are actually entering into the search boxes of Google, Yahoo or MSN.  For example, if you enter "toy truck" into the Overture Inventory Keyword Selecto Tool, you might see the following results:

Let us suppose you have decided to start your own web design business.  Incidently, this is probably one of the most competitve fields you could choose, but if that is your passion, this fact should not stop you.  You decide that you want to eventually rank on the first page of Google for the term "web design."  Given the competition, you should be prepared for years of work as you begin building the best, most informative and entertaining site on the Internet about "web design." 

In the mean time, however, you have bills to pay, and you cannot wait around for a top ranking for the phrase "web design" before landing your first job.  Instead, you should begin by targeting less competitive terms and work your way up.

A key phrase pyramid has your most desirable search phrase at the very top, in this case "web design."  Beneath this top level are "secondary phrases."  Secondary phrases contain your phrase plus one additional term.  Beneath this level are the tertiary phrases, which contain your phrase plus two additional terms.  You should build your pyramid as deep as the key phrase search tool can provide data.  

In the earliest days of web design, there was no such thing as "dynamic content."  What you saw is what you got.  This period, however, did not last long as developers learned to use javascript to insert content into the page whenever a user clicked on a link or performed some other action.  Even though it may have been encoded in javascript, however, the content was still somewhere in the source code, and therefore still had to be loaded at the time the page was accessed. 

The discovery of AJAX took things a step further.  By combining javascript with "server side scripting," AJAX gives you the ability to insert content into your page based upon changing variables and requests.  You can use AJAX, for example, to retrieve information from your database and display it on the screen without reloading the page. 

What does all of this mean?

Let us take a step back for a moment and put this into context for those who may not have programming experience, because the lesson here is relevant for anyone who wants the utmost performance from their website.  A concrete example should serve to illustrate the point.

Let us suppose you wanted to put the entire contents of the Encyclopedia Britannica on your website, but you do not want to the user to have to go to different pages.  Simple enough, right?  You just sit down at your computer one evening and transcribe all the volumes A-Z into a single webpage and give it the address www.yourwebsite.com/encyclopedia.htm. 

What do you think is going to happen when someone tries to access this page?  Well, the best case scenario is that the vistor would see a blank screen for several hours while all of the content was being loaded.  Finally, if the connection was not lost, they would see the encyclopedia contents appear.  The content would go so far down the page that the visitor could scroll down all day and not see the end of it.  Not a very efficient way of doing things. 

Now, throw javascript into the equation.   You would now have the option of dividing the encyclopedia into many pages that the user could page through by clicking buttons or entering numbers into a form field.  However, with this approach the page will still take the same amount of time to load.  The scroll issue would be resolved, but not the load time.

Using AJAX in this example, instead of loading the encyclopedia into a web page you would load it into your database instead.  Then using javascript and backend "scripting," you could load the content as it is needed without ever reloading the page.   The first time the user accessed encyclopedia.htm, the first page on the encyclopedia would appear almost instantly.  Then, as they pressed a button paging forward, the content would change without ever reloading the page.  It would appear to be lightning fast.  However, if the user ever chose to look at the source code, the first page is still all that would appear.

This is of course an extreme, and rather silly example, but hopefully it helps explain the difference between static content, and content generated by javascript and AJAX.

So what's the dilemma?

In the above example, it would seem that the most obvious choice is the use of AJAX.  Fast load time, lighting fast changing content, what could be better?  Here's the problem:

If you chose to display page 1 of volume A when the visitor accesses the page, that is all that would appear in the source code as well.  In other words, that is all the search engines would see.  This is a major drawback.  If someone were to search for "zoology" in Google, they would never find the zoology entry in your encyclopedia page because as far as any search engine can tell, it is not there.

In some cases, that is a problem.  In others, it is exactly what you want.

Another, more real life example may help.  Suppose you have a website that sells electronic equipment online.  As a comprehensive dealer, you have over 200 categories on your website, which product offerings ranging from car stereos, to TVs and computers.  Now it would be nice if the visitor could find any other category on your website from any page.  However, it is not practical to load all 200 categories onto every page, both from a user experience and a search engine standpoint.

From the user point of view, the pages would take forever to load.  From a search engine standpoint, the "relevancy" of every page would be diluted considerably.  With every page pointing to 200 other pages or more, Google would not be able to tell much difference between a page that is about TVs and a page that is about computers.  The use of AJAX would be a good approach to this problem.

Sometimes, however, you want the content in your page.  If you have a page about TVs, for example, and have 15 other categories about TVs, you would want those links to be in the source code in order to help search engines determine what your page is about.  However, due to space requirements, you might have a need to compress the display of that content.

A Working Example

With appropriate use of javascript and AJAX it is possible to strike a perfect balance between content that appears in the source code, and content that is loaded dynamically.  Best of all, the appearance of the two approaches will be indistinguishable to your visitors.

The following are two collapsable/expandable trees.  The first uses javascript, the second uses AJAX.  The source code follows each example to make the distinction clear.


Example 1: Javascript

•  Category 1
  •  Element 1
•  Category 2
  •  Element 2

•  Category 1
•  Category 2

It is a lovely thing to wake up one morning and discover that yesterday your website received ten thousand unique visitors. If your website had real estate, you would need a property as large as a stadium to contain the amount of attention you are receiving. And yet, it is all happening seemingly in the comfort of your home office, as you sit down for coffee one morning and review your website statistics on Google Analytics, or another webstats program.

The internet has in certain ways made the playing field more level. By making information, rather than capital, the primary factor in determining visibility (although we all know this is far from absolute) a cluster of individuals with a fury of ideas can quite easily compete with a large, multi-national corporation, if only in a limited scope or particular region.

The engineers at Google and other search engines are smart fellows indeed, but they have hearts as well. What they have effectively done, and what so many SEO's have observed and shared with their clients, is found a way to write an algorithm that gives preference to the continuous production of original, creative content regarding a particular subject matter. A company of three individuals may find more creative energy to produce such content as a company of ten thousand employees who are there only for a paycheck.

If there is any secret formula to a top ranking in the search engines, it is a quite simple one: content equals traffic. If I had one thing and one thing only that I could pass on to all who wanted to strengthen their presence on the web, it would be this simple rule. A recent client who just began a basic blog website with pay per click ads quickly found that on days he wrote a blog, he made upwards of 3 times the amount he would make on days he did not write.

My impression is that the traffic fluctuations are not so much a result as Google rapidly changing its preferences in the rankings, but the organic spread of information and interest across a million invisible channels ranging from email to chat to telephone conversations. The truth is that creative thought is a rare thing indeed, and when it presents itself, attention upon it follows as naturally as night follows day.

The beauty of being found has more to do with completing this cycle of seeker and sought than it does with beating out the competition that was not, at that time, ready to be found. If the time for you to be found is now, however, then you should seize upon everything you have to rise from the ashes. The ashes could be an unchallenging job, a stagnant company, or a flailing nonprofit organization. No matter what your beginning point, informationarchitech can meet you there and assist you in finding your way up. Being found is what we are all about.

Contact us today to learn more about how informationarchiTECH can help you or your company become more findable in the growing sea of information.

In the age of Augustus Rex of Prussia, the European world was filled with men who many regarded as tricksters, and some as possessors of a secret art.  Calling themselves 'Alchemists,' they claimed to posess the ability to transform one element into another--namely, lead into gold.  The recipes were said to be found among the pages of ancient Roman poetry such as Ovid or Virgil.  The practitioners include many whose names have been lost, and others, like Sir Isaac Newton, whose names are as known to us as common household words.  As secretive in their person as in their art, most alchemists never found themselves in a position where their claims were put to the ultimate test.  Johannes Friedrich Böttger was one who did not get off so easily.  Augustus "the Strong" had him locked away into a chamber in the Royal Palace until the day that he could successfully transform lead into gold.  He never succeeded in his efforts, but made a discovery no less precious--the recipe for porcelain, which until that moment had been a secret of the Orient.

A more complete history of this discovery and its impact can be found on the website for which I wrote all content, which currently ranks #1 in Google for the term "antique china."  (#9 for "porcelain")   Its current position did not occur by accident, but through the deliberate efforts of myself, who wrote all of the content, and others who were at that time my mentors.  The process is called "Search Engine Optimization," a service which is purported to guarantee high rankings in the "organic results" of search engines like Google, Yahoo or MSN.  An exact search for the term "search engine optimization" returned 76 million results in Google on the day of this blog's writing.  Clearly a competitive industry; but with so many companies across the world offering this service, how can their claims all possibly be true?

Questions about the veracity of SEO's claims have given rise to broader questions about whether the "industry" is anything more than another manifestation of the snake oil salesman with upgraded technology.  Considering that Google's "ranking algorithm" is a kept secret, consisting of thousands of complex mathematical formulas, can a #1 ranking for any term ever truly be guaranteed?  Or even a listing on the first page?  With this ranking constantly being updated by the engineers at Google and other search engine companies, can SEO really be considered a science that can be learned?  Or will it simply remain in the shadowy, unverifiable realm of the Alchemist until the day its outrageous claims are finally forgotten?

As someone who has had personal experience with the success of certain techniques, such as the one mentioned above, I am partial to the belief that there is a craft possessed by some, but not all, which makes certain guarantees regarding placement in the search engine rankings possible.  However, all claims must include specific qualifications.  The main qualification is that it will require hard work.  The more competitive the industry, the harder you should be willing to work in order to obtain the ranking you feel you should deserve.  This second qualification is one rarely heard.  You should attempt to attain a ranking, not because you have beaten the system, but because you have made your website the true winner.

This was my approach with Antique, China, Porcelain & Collectibles.  My process of Search Engine Optimization began with reading books about antiques.   Second, I began writing articles about antiques and posting them on the website.  In between research and writing, I sought out other antique or porcelain related websites and requested link exchanges.  Soon I was building relationships with other antique authorities on their webs, and websites began to link to us, not because we requested a link exchange, but because they valued the information our website contained.  Eventually I noticed that eBay sellers were quoting our website in their listings.  One day, we woke up and found ourselves in the #1 position for the term "antique china" in Yahoo, and Google was soon to follow.

It is my opinion that if you want to obtain a top ranking for a term, you must first ask yourself whether your website truly merits that positioning.  Is your website the most valuable and relevant resource for the majority of people who would submit that search phrase?  If it is not, you then have to decide whether you are willing to invest the energy to turn your website into one that is; or choose a more accurate phrase.

Of course, there are plenty of particular techniques in addition to simply writing good content and exchanging links, and having knowledge of these will certainly expedite your rise to the top.  In addition, many people can benefit from coaching and encouragement along the way, and it is in these ways that informationarchitech can help you.  However it is important to remember that without personal will and determination, no enterprise, web based or otherwise, can succeed.

We may not be able to turn lead into gold, but with careful study and perseverance, there is no reason why you should not be able to use the knowledge you have to become a valued and prosperous presence on the Web.  SEO is not an exact science to be sure, but it is not entirely mysterious either.  Combining continuous observation with research, the method by which search engines rank websites can be learned.  It is not necessary to understand the precise forumula in order to glean the most significant factors.  Like alchemists, however, SEOs do their best work when put to the test!

Click here to request SEO services.

As a personal note, I find the term “information architech” to be so pretentious it hurts.

In response to the needs of small business owners and individuals who want to build a presence on the web, informationarchiTECH has developed several turn-key solutions.  Prices include free hosting and domain registration for one year!

• Basic Blog Website
  Recent Examples: Imperial Logic, Comic Book Lounge
  Using WordPress blog software, you can choose from a variety of basic templates.  We will then assist you in modifying the layout to your specifications, including a custom header design.  This package includes 2 free hours of phone/email consultation regarding promotion of your site, assistance with setting up pay-per-click ads, or other special needs.
  
• Category/Content Managed Site
  Recent Examples: Austin Bicycle Cabs
  Using informationarchiTECH's category and content management software, we will deliver you a website with an online administrative control panel for easy creation of new categories and content, as well as modification to existing data.  Price also includes contact form which delivers inquiries to your email, a dynamic footer which adds link to content pages as they are created, and a dynamic navigation bar which includes links to categories.  Special effects navigation bars such as the one used on the informationarchiTECH website can be implemented at no additional charge.
• Category/Content Managed Site + Blog
  Recent Examples: Texas Auto & Home Insurance
  Same as above, but with Blog.  Online administraive control panel allows you to easily create new blogs which will appear on the blog section of your website.  Includes archiving functionality and XML 1.0 syndication capabilities.
• Complete E-commerce Solution
  Recent Examples: mp3playeraccessories, Organic Fair Trade
  Full fledged "architectural" e-commerce package.  Web package includes category management, content management, blog, forum, product manager and shopping cart.  Integrate into paypal or have orders delieved into a secure online order panel.  Web site software is designed for optimal performance in the search engines.  Forum postings, blog postings, product listings and articles are integrated into a single category structure and interlinked for a perfect link structure that will help build rankings quickly.
  
  * - Note: price includes basic site layout, including a 2- or 3-column navigational scheme and an attractive header.  In some cases our software can be integrated into existing layouts.  Advanced layouts such as the one seen on mp3playeraccessories range from $500-$1000.

Of course, we are more than happy to meet special needs or requests, whether they include additional functionalities not described above, or entirely new concepts.  Please contact us today to get a quote on your project, or to discuss purchase of one of our turn key solutions.

"The beginning of all understanding is classification." -Hayden White

Categories are, first and foremost, a human invention. There are no categories in the natural world. Even the worlds we create artificially evade classification. The more complex any collection of information, the more difficult it becomes to invent a structure of categories which can describe the data without contradiction, ambiguity or misrepresentation.

Those who have little experience with the subject dismiss it immediately. After all, how hard can it be to divide information into logical categories? Especially when you already know everything there is to know about the products, services or pieces of information you are trying to organize! Nonetheless, anyone who has tried to sit down and order data in a logical manner has seen the problem all to clearly. For any given set of data, there are multiple ways in which it can be organized, each one as logical as the other.

The trouble comes when it is believed that one scheme must be placed over the other; when one attribute must be considered more important than any other. Informationarchitech refuses to adhere to strict dichtomies, in the belief that information is infinitely malleable, and like meaning itself, is forever in flux.

Static categories are out of date, a leave-over from the brick-and-mortar days in which we had to place particular items in separate aisles of even the most general of stores. Now we must begin to understand virtual categories, which are created or dropped in an instant's notice, according to the needs of a given moment. Whether you have an existing category structure that needs significant pruning, or have just been bombarded with a set of data that you have no idea how to order, Informationarchitech is here to help.

If there is anything about the technique used by Informationarchitech to optimize websites that can be considered unique, it is the manner in which we make use  of Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) in the effort to build or enhance a site for Search Engine Optimization (SEO) purposes. Put another way, we use a particular web design technique (CSS) in such a way that the website will appear in the top 10 results for any user typing a relevant term into a search engine such as Google or Yahoo (SEO).

Since SEO is relatively new, and CSS even newer, there is little discussion to be found online about this topic. One reason could very well be that those who realize the connection to its full extent are hestitant to even mention it. It is one of those ideas that is literally "too good" for one to feel comfortable about sharing freely-especially since SEO is an inherently competitive field. The audiences that the two acronyms attract (CSS and SEO) is probably another good reason the connection has not been explicitly made by the majority of the web design/architecture community.

Anyone would have to admit that a machine (such as a search engine) can never truly find meaning in the same way a human would. For this, a human touch is required. Put simply, CSS allows you to abstract the "textual information" on a web page from its "display information." Therefore, you may be able to fully optimize the text side (which search engines understand) without compromizing the display side (which humans understand.)

Strangely enough, a search engine is in certain ways more similar most humans than a computer. A search engine, for example, cannot read code. A search engine does not understand javascript, much less PHP, ASP or Macromedia Flash. A search engine has a limited understanding of HTML, but an insatiable appetite for words. Most of the interesting "eye candy" that is accomplished with Macromedia Flash can be replicated using CSS, and almost any HTML can be simplified using it.

This means you no longer have to decide between drop down menus and search engine-friendliness. With CSS, you can have both--and more of each than before. Informationarchitech is equipped with the latest in CSS and AJAX technology, which allows us to take your existing site and convert the source code into a format more easily understood by search engines. This is, in many cases, the first and most effective step in making an existing website appear higher in the search engine rankings. The mere re-ordering of the source code is sometimes all that is needed to get an otherwise good website the recognition it deserves in the search engines.

SEO using CSS is the cutting edge of information architecture. Click here to request more information about how we can transform your website with "under the hood" modifications that will significantly enhance its performance in the search engine rankings.

The importance of proper domain name selection cannot be underestimated. And yet, deciding which is the ideal domain name for a particular site is far from straightforward.

On the one hand, SEOs insist upon the importance of choosing domain names with "relevant key terms." On the other, we have the obvious counter-examples of such lucrative institutions as Ebay, Yahoo and Amazon, whose domain name ostensibly has nothing whatsoever to do with the relevant product or service they offer.

In every situation, a proper balance must be sought between a name that is "search engine friendly" as well as "human friendly."

Arguments in favor of "key-term-only" domain names.

This school of thought represents one extreme in the realm of domain name selection. The idea here is that the vast majority of web users find websites using a search engine, not memorized urls such as "amazon" or "yahoo." There is a widely held understanding (though, like anything search engine related, such speculation remains regulated to the realm of theory) that of the many factors that search engines take into account when calculating results ranking, the domain name itself bears the most weight. Why might this be?

Well, one reason might be that a domain name is pretty hard to fake. In order to have a domain name, you actually have to purchase it. On the other hand, one can easily change the wording of a title tag (often considered the 2nd most important factor) to accomodate search phrases that are "hot" this month. Weighing a domain name highly helps protect against the ignoble though common pursuit (benefiting no one) of getting a site to rank highly for irrelevant or completely unrelated terms.

However, there is another, less understood reason why domains with key terms in the URL name rank higher than many of their counterparts. This reason is particularly relevant for Google, although other search engines are known to take similar factoring into account.

At of the time of this article's writing, any person entering the seemingly innocuous phrase "miserable failure" into Google would find the biography of current president George W. Bush (published on the official White House website, no less) returned as the #1 result. How could this be? After all, this phrase appears nowhere in the page itself. The title tags, header tags, content and even meta tags are conspicuously lacking this "key phrase." This manipulation of the search results occured quite intentionally, in a coordinated attempt in which hundreds of web site owners created links to Bush's biography page, using the term "miserable failure" in the link text. (i.e. miserable failure.) This example clearly illustrates the importance Google places upon inbound links (a.k.a. "external content") in calculating search engine rankings.

What does this have to do with domain names? Well, if the domain name of your website is "antique-china-porcelain-collectibles.com," then you can be pretty certain that the key terms you are targeting will appear in any link made to your site. On the other hand, if you want to choose something more clever, like "rarest treasures," you have no way of knowing whether links to your site will tell search engines (or even human users) anything about the actual content of your site.

Arguments in favor of a human friendly URL.

Many of the arguments in favor of a coherent, memorable or "catchy" url are obvious. In fact, this subject could easily be lumped into the much longer history of "branding." (Or, alternately, the very recent marketing concept of the "meme.") Search engines, after all, are built to assist users in navigating through a swamp of basically anonymous data. Make your company/URL name a household work, however, and you are no longer anonymous. These days, a user looking for reading material is more likely to enter "Amazon.com" into the URL field of the browser than to enter "books" into the form field of a search engine.

SEOs would rather ignore this fact. An information architect, on the other hand, is more commited to the findability of information than search engine technology. Although it is unlikely that one will find a URL as catching as Ebay, especially these days, its possibility should never be ruled out. Consequently, an information architect should be prepared to develop a strategy surrounding domain names that may not appeal to search engines, per se.

Choosing a domain name.

The first step, therefore, in any project undertaken by informationarchitech, is to work with you to decide upon a domain name given your available needs and resources. If you are wanting to get your existing site ranked for a niche term in the next two months, chances are you will need to stick to the domain name you have already chosen. If you have a good year or so to work with, we will help you register an optimal name given the findings of our market research. Finally, if you are in it for the long haul and want to promote a brand name on the internet, the next Amazon.com, we can help you transform such a dream into reality.