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| Author: Jason Ciment |
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Overview of "Web Site" Page/Directory Structure and "Internal Linking"
One of the tactics for optimizing your pages is to create "internal authoritative links" which refers to links from one page to another within your site. A web page can receive "votes" from the anchor text of incoming links which come from both external sites (higher value) and other pages on the same site (lower value). Though the votes from pages within your site may be of lower value, there are ways to utilize internal links in SEO.
This section describes the site structure we recommend for an optimized web site. It includes not only the web pages every site should have but also how the directories, pathways and page names should be configured as well as the anchor text of each link.
Briefly these are the additional web pages your site should have:
- News
- Link/Resources
- Directory
- Ecommerce
- Articles
- Sitemap (2x)
Timetable: Day 2 (Learn about it), Day 3-5 (Apply it)
Every web site should have a minimum number of pages and a minimum set of pages in terms of what each page represents. Below is a list and description of each type of web page you should have on your site in order to maximize your rankability.
News Page:
This is simply a content oriented page that has a news look and feel. You should update content here as often as possible. You can either use exclusive content (you write it or outsource it of course) or use the fresh content software identified in section 7 to post fresh "news" on this page. Once this page has been live for at least 2 weeks, you can then submit it to Google/News and try to get this picked up as a reliable news source. See the "Offsite Indirect Inbound Link Strategy Section" for more info.
See an example of a news page here:
http://www.webcart.net/webcart10/page-news.htm
Links/Resources Page:
This is a page that you set up for exchanging links with other sites or simply listing links to other sites as a sort of industry specific resources section. You should have 25 links MAX per links page. As the number of sites exchanging link grows (we call these linking partners), you can create different categories, or a links directory to keep the navigation user friendly.
See an example of a links page here:
http://www.webcart.net/webcart10/page-resources.htm
Directory Page:
This is similar in part to a links page but it is more sophisticated. Using automated directory software, you can build a comprehensive directory of sites thematically connected to your site. It's basically a two-step process. You invite people to list their site and you send them to a form page included with the directory software where they can sign up. The time-consuming task of course is finding people to invite. You can either do this manually by searching out sites via search engines or in a more automated sense by using software to automatically hunt for sites and email them the link to the form page. You can of course advertise and do other techniques to attract people to sign up in your directory.
See an example of a directory here: http://www.directory.webcart.net
Ecommerce Pages:
If you have an ecommerce site or online store, then you will want to have a clear navigation structure for your online catalogue. This process involves having two sets of pages. One set is your category listings where each category links to a category specific page that lists all the products in that category. From that category listing page, each product should be linked to a unique product page where you generally feature the product sku, name, price and description - anything else is optional.
One of the most important and overlooked techniques is to create a product page for each product AND to name the product page with the name of the product (instead of naming the page with the SKU). Along the same way of thinking, each category page should also be named with the category instead of a technical nomenclature based on numbers.
Examples of how to name your pages include:
http://www.magmall.com/cat-news_magazines.htm
http://www.magmall.com/prod-newsweek_magazine.htm
Articles Pages:
This is one of the most labor intensive techniques but despite that one of the most rewarding. What you do is post articles where you sprinkle all the keywords from your keyword pyramid into content rich articles. The reason this technique is so effective is because not only does your site have tons of keyword rich content, but it is fresh content so you appear more relevant and authoritative.
Ideally you want each keyword phrase to be represented by a 5 page mini-site of articles (where each article links to the next article). This means you would post 5 articles about one keyword phrase. So if you have 5 top phrases, you would over time post 25 articles. And you would have one article index page that contains links either to all 25 articles or to the 5 primary articles for each keyword and those articles would link to the 4 article pages. I know this gets confusing and that's why we have the sample template to help you figure this part out.
SiteMaps:
A sitemap is a page on your web site that has links to all your web pages. There are 2 versions of the sitemap - one in html (that the visitor actually sees) and one in XML (that the search engines use to index and catalogue your site).
Since Google and Yahoo allow you to submit an XML sitemap file with all your pages and products, this is the fastest way to let the search engines know about all your pages. It doesn't mean you will be instantly ranked but at least you will be "registered" or "indexed".
You should keep sitemap pages to no more than 75 links per sitemap page and if your site has hundreds of pages, create multiple sitemap pages with one sitemap index page linking to all the sitemap pages.
To automate the process of creating the 3 sitemaps you need follow these steps:
1. Upload 3 blank files into the directory where you want to store each sitemap and name each file as follows:
a. sitemap.xml
b. ror.xml (for yahoo sitemap)
c. sitemap.html (for html version)
2. Do a CHGMD command with your ftp program to set each file to 666
3. Register for Yahoo site explorer:
a. https://siteexplorer.search.yahoo.com/
b. Follow the steps to validate your site
c. Go to Feeds and register your ror.xml file
4. Purchase the XML sitemap creator software here:
a. http://www.xml-sitemaps.com/
b. Run the software to create the 3 types of sitemaps you will need
c. For main settings:
- Use server's response
- Ping Google when generation is done
- Ping Yahoo
- Get a Yahoo App ID
Here are some guidelines to follow:
- The link to your Sitemap page should be one of the first navigation links at the top of your home page source code.
- Keyword rich anchor text links from sitemap to each internal page.
- Keyword rich text descriptions under each link in sitemap.
- Keyword rich link to your home page at the very top of your sitemap page.
- See sitemap layout examples below:
o http://finance.yahoo.com/sm o http://www.apple.com/find/sitemap.html o http://www.google.com/sitemap.html
Naming Conventions:
There are some basic guidelines for naming web files and directories. Generally, you should use keywords in the domain name, directories, subdirectories, subdomains and page names for products and categories of your site. There is no consensus on using Hyphenated vs Unhyphenated names. One of the easiest things to do is make sure that your home page link uses a keyword in the anchor text, not just the word Home.
Examples of how to structure links:
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