Transcript Site Architecture And Internal Linking

Site Architecture and Internal Linking
By Stephan Spencer,
Founder & President, Netconcepts
© 2006 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com [email protected]
Site Architecture
 It’s not just about inbound links; internal links matter too
 Your home page’s PageRank gets distributed to your deep
pages by virtue of your hierarchical internal linking structure
 Links are the currency of the Web as far as search engines are
concerned; spend it wisely w/in your site
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Site hierarchy (tree structure)
Breadcrumb navigation
Site map
Tagging and folksonomies
© 2006 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com [email protected]
Breadcrumb
navigation
© 2006 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com [email protected]
Tag Cloud
© 2006 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com [email protected]
Let It Flow
 Link juice dissipates due to
– Dynamic URLs
– Session IDs or User IDs in the URL
– Superfluous flags in the URL
 Link juice is typically blocked by
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Links based in JavaScript, Java, or Flash
Overly complex URLs (e.g. 7 parameters in the query string)
Forms (including pulldown lists)
Temporary (302) redirects
© 2006 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com [email protected]
Let It Flow
 Manage the flow using “nofollow” on unimportant links
– <a href=“/privacy-policy.htm” rel=“nofollow”>
 Does it flow? Tools to check
– Poodle Predictor (www.gritechnologies.com/tools/spider.go)
– Server Header Checker (www.searchengineworld.com/cgibin/servercheck.cgi)
– SEOChat’s PageRank Lookup
– Site: search on SEOChat’s PageRank Search
© 2006 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com [email protected]
Server Header Checker
© 2006 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com [email protected]
SEOChat’s PageRank Lookup
© 2006 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com [email protected]
SEOChat’s PageRank Search
© 2006 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com [email protected]
URL Testing & Iterative Optimization
 URL affects
searcher
clickthrough
rates
 Short URLs
get clicked on
2X long URLs
(Source: MarketingSherpa,
used with permission)
© 2006 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com [email protected]
URL Testing & Iterative Optimization
 Further, long URLs appear to act as a deterrent to clicking,
drawing attention away from its listing and instead directing it to
the listing below it, which then gets clicked 2.5x more frequently.
– http://searchengineland.com/080515-084124.php
 Don’t be complacent with search-friendly URLs. Test and
optimize.
 Make iterative improvements to URLs, but don’t lose link juice to
previous URLs. 301 previous URLs to latest. No chains of 301s.
© 2006 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com [email protected]
Site Architecture for Ecommerce Sites
(and other Large Dynamic Sites)
© 2006 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com [email protected]
Linking Structure
 Anchor text is critical
 Hierarchical
– Through good site-wide navigational design in a header, sidebar or footer
 Breadcrumb navigation
– Good for users and good for search engines
– Reinforces which pages are the most important
 No flash-only navigation. Alt text on graphical links.
 Mouseover nav - CSS, not Javascript
 Most important deep pages should be minimal # of clicks from
home page
© 2006 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com [email protected]
Pagination
 Excessive pagination can cause numerous pages of product
listings to not get crawled. Reduce # of pages in pagination
system to improve crawlability & indexation
 Next/Previous vs. page number list vs. Show All
 Consider disallowing “View All” links and forcing spiders through
subcat pages. Display as many products per page as possible
(max 120) within 150K file size.
 Fewer products per subcat = fewer pagination pages to crawl at
subcat level for max product indexation
© 2006 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com [email protected]
Guided Navigation
 Guided navigation, a.k.a. faceted navigation, provides clickable
product inventory breakdowns, by brand, color, price range, etc.
By doing so it creates into a huge number of permutations for the
spiders to follow.
 The problem is exacerbated by having column headings
clickable for resorting
 Nofollow all links that do price range breakdown, re-sorting and
re-pagination
© 2006 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com [email protected]
© 2006 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com [email protected]
Categorization
 Recruit a taxonomy specialist
 Follow web standards in naming conventions
– Readily understandable by most web users. E.g. ”About us”
 Match up with keyword research
 Legacy names / industry buzzwords as category names not
always ideal
– E.g. kitchen electrics vs kitchen small appliances
– E.g. bespoke vs tailored
 Goes into anchor! Also the title, H1, copy on the page, URL…
© 2006 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com [email protected]
Tagging
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Great for deep internal linking, interlinking
Generates keyword-rich links
Display tag clouds of most popular tags
Link to "related tags”
Allow visitors to tag your stuff? (ie. “folksonomies”)
– Customers use their own terminology / vocabulary
 Mine your own weblogs to look for most frequently searched
keywords and use those as tags
 Also tag externally: reddit, delicious, digg, Technorati
© 2006 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com [email protected]
Internal Search Results Pages
 Is it indexable content? Only if engines can find it
through links.
 Caution: Google’s new webmaster guideline
© 2006 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com [email protected]
Great Content, No Inlinks = Invisible
 Home page attracts the most links
 Internal linking structure helps with spending your PageRank
internally
 Don’t neglect building inlinks to deep pages too
 When you rank well in the engines, their results get scraped and
you get links
 Don't put a barrier up to password protect your archives. Or if
you must, let the spiders through without password.
© 2006 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com [email protected]
Multiple Copies of Product Pages
 Duplicate content = BAD
 Paraphrase and/or add additional unique content
 On different sites
– Does one site host the canonical version? If so, help the
spiders figure out which one is canonical by linking to it from
the others.
 On the same site
– Superfluous parameters in the URL (tracking codes,
breadcrumb trail, session IDs, etc.)
© 2006 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com [email protected]
Site Architecture for Blogs
© 2006 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com [email protected]
Rejig Internal Linking Structure
 Tag clouds & tag pages & tag conjunction pages (e.g.
“UTW Theme Compatibility Thing” WordPress plugin)
 Related Posts (e.g. “Yet Another Related Posts” plugin)
 Top 10 posts (e.g. “Popularity Contest” plugin)
 Next & Previous / pagination (e.g. “WP-PageNavi”
plugin)
© 2006 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com [email protected]
© 2006 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com [email protected]
Tags point
to Technorati
tag pages
© 2006 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com
Tags point to
internal tag
[email protected]
pages
A tag page
© 2006 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com [email protected]
© 2006 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com [email protected]
© 2006 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com [email protected]
Title Tags
 Blog name at the end of the title, not at the beginning
 Tag name should go in title on a tag page
 Customize with additional keywords for display only on
your home page
 Override title tags w/ custom one ( “SEO Title Tag”
WordPress plugin)
© 2006 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com [email protected]
“SEO Title Tag” plugin for WordPress
 Free & open source
 Allows you to override the title tag with a custom one on any
post, static page, tag page, category page, etc.
 Now updated to work with WordPress 2.3+
 Can even define a custom title on ANY url
 Reverses the order of the blog name and the title, or drop the
blog name altogether, or replace it with a shorter nickname
 Can use category’s description as the title on category pages
 Has a Mass Edit admin and an Options page to change settings
 Download at www.netconcepts.com/seo-title-tag-plugin/
© 2006 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com [email protected]
© 2006 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com [email protected]
© 2006 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com [email protected]
© 2006 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com [email protected]
© 2006 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com [email protected]
© 2006 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com [email protected]
© 2006 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com [email protected]
© 2006 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com [email protected]
Great name
for the blog!
© 2006 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com [email protected]
© 2006 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com [email protected]
URLs
 Subdomain? Subdirectory? New domain? Domain of
your blog host?
– www.metlife.com/blog vs. StayingFitBlog.com
– Got a blogspot.com or wordpress.com URL? You benefit
from their domain authority, but you’re forever wedded to
them!
 Rewrite to contain keywords, hyphens not underscores
 Maintain legacy URLs even after switching platforms
 Keep post slugs relatively short (e.g. “Slug Trimmer” or
“Clean Trunks” plugin)
© 2006 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com [email protected]
URL Testing & Iterative Optimization
 Test and optimize URLs, but don’t lose link juice to previous
URLs. 301 previous URLs to latest. No chains of 301s.
 WordPress handles 301s automatically when renaming post slugs
 Mass edit admin for URLs (post slugs) in WordPress – via the
“SEO Title Tag” plugin (www.netconcepts.com/seo-title-tagplugin)
© 2006 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com [email protected]
© 2006 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com [email protected]
Anchor Text
 Make the post’s title a link to the permalink page
 Use SEOMoz Backlink Anchor Text Analysis tool or
BLA (tools.seobook.com/backlink-analyzer) to look for
opportunities to request revisions to anchor text on
inbound links
 Internally link back to old, relevant posts within the body
of a blog post. Don’t use “here” or “previously” etc. as
the anchor text!
© 2006 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com [email protected]
Post title is anchor text.
“Permalink” is yucky anchor text!
© 2006 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com [email protected]
PageRank Sculpting Your Blog
 My preference is to have rel=nofollow
– On links in trackbacks, comments (by default on most platforms)
– Where the link would be reciprocal
– On links to date-based archives, assuming you have category and tag
hierarchy (noindexing/disallowing is not enough!)
© 2006 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com [email protected]
More Blog Optimizations
 Heading tags
– category name on category page
– Yes for post titles, no for dates!
 Emphasis tags within posts (bold, strong, etc.)
© 2006 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com [email protected]
More Blog Optimizations
 “Optional Excerpts” (to minimize duplicate content)
– Write unique content (i.e. paraphrase), don’t just use the first
couple paragraphs (i.e. Don’t use the <!--more--> tag!)
 “Sticky” posts
– Always appear at the top of the page
– A way to add keyword-rich intro copy to a category page or
tag page
– e.g. “Adhesive” or “WP-Sticky” plugin
 Author profile pages & author links (for group blogs)
© 2006 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com [email protected]
Sticky post
© 2006 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com [email protected]
Author profile
© 2006 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com [email protected]
More Cool WordPress Plugins
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PodPress
Popularity Contest
EmailShroud & Transpose Email
ShareThis
MyAvatars
WordPress Quiz Plugin
WP-PostRatings
WP-Polls
© 2006 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com [email protected]
Q&A!
 For an ebook on Google power searching, SEO
checklists & worksheets, and audio recording, executive
summary & transcript of thought leaders
teleconferences on SEO & blogging, drop me your
business card or e-mail your request to
[email protected]
 To contact me: [email protected]
© 2006 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com [email protected]