Visual SEOs do it better
There's more to a successful search engine optimization campaign than title tag optimization and link building - although those are certainly two good practices to engage in. The everyday SEO, those working in the true digital trenches, need to be involved in a website from the initial planning stages - namely when it relates to a website's architecture (its structure or hierarchy).
Wireframes present a terrific way for SEOs to understand how existing sites are currently organized and control how new sites will be developed in the future. As was suggested in "Technical SEO: The Science of Digital Home Building" (available within the September 2013 issue of Website Magazine), the reason that website architecture should be a practice/process for SEO's is because it helps establish the scope of the digital project - not just the anticipated size, but also the site's "functionality" and "flow" which might actually be barriers to greater search engine visibility.
When working with wireframes in an SEO context a few considerations should be made. First, since websites need to be category driven, wireframes should be used to ensure that content is organized in a minimal number of clear and distinct sections. Second, content needs to accessible from within a few clicks of the root domain, because higher placement in the site structure denotes priority and importance
Many digital media professionals (and Website Magazine readers in particular) are already quite familiar with wireframes but more so in a design context (read Getting Wild with Wireframes). Wireframe solutions, however, can be used for far more than just creating webpage layouts. They are really best used to visualize the broader information architecture, revealing instances when a site really isn't optimized at all.
Below you'll find some of the top wireframing tools in the digital market today. Did we miss one? If so, let us by sharing a comment below!
