IA is all about organizing, structuring and labeling content in an effective way. So users can find information and complete the tasks easily and search engines can crawl, understand and index your website accordingly.
IA from user’s point of view:
Users look at website header which consists of name / logo and site navigation menu to find the info they want. Provide intuitive navigation. Make your logo clickable and linked to home page.
They look at page titles, body text, images, image captions, clickable things like links within the content, buttons, icons / images, website footer and links.
So create a page layout that is easy to scan and read. Show visual hierarchy. First create wireframes. Wireframes are layouts without detailed visual treatment. They show what content should be included on a page and its basic positioning.
IA from search engines point of view:
Search engines view websites differently. They look at – website html, css, js, character encoding, meta page name, meta page description, meta keywords, navigation links, image tags, how coding is done, how the content is written and linked, footer links, and site map to know the detailed structure of the site.
Use robots.txt file to tell search engines which pages of your website to crawl and which not. Also, you can specify who can crawl your site and who can't.
Use 301 redirect command to tell search engines that a particular webpage has permanently moved and that you want them to index the new webpage and drop old one from their index.
Consider these things. Create a well thought out information architecture that is user centric and search engine friendly and get more leads!