Site Architecture and Internal Linking

Site Architecture and Internal LinkingBy Stephan Spencer,

Founder & President, Netconcepts

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– Site hierarchy (tree structure)– Breadcrumb navigation– Site map– Tagging and folksonomies

Breadcrumb navigation

Tag Cloud

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– 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

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/cgi-

bin/servercheck.cgi)– SEOChat’s PageRank Lookup – Site: search on SEOChat’s PageRank Search

Server Header Checker

SEOChat’s PageRank Lookup

SEOChat’s PageRank Search

URL Testing & Iterative Optimization URL affects

searcherclickthroughrates

Short URLsget clicked on2X long URLs

(Source: MarketingSherpa, used with permission)

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.

Site Architecture for Ecommerce Sites (and other Large Dynamic Sites)

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

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

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

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…

Tagging 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

Internal Search Results Pages Is it indexable content? Only if engines can find it

through links. Caution: Google’s new webmaster guideline

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.

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.)

Site Architecture for Blogs

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)

Tags pointto Technoratitag pages

Tags point tointernal tagpages

A tag page

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)

“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/

Great namefor the blog!

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)

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-tag-plugin)

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!

Post title is anchor text.“Permalink” is yucky anchor text!

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!)

More Blog Optimizations Heading tags

– category name on category page– Yes for post titles, no for dates!

Emphasis tags within posts (bold, strong, etc.)

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  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)

Sticky post

Author profile

More Cool WordPress Plugins PodPress Popularity Contest EmailShroud & Transpose Email ShareThis MyAvatars WordPress Quiz Plugin WP-PostRatings WP-Polls

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 seo@netconcepts.com

To contact me: stephan@netconcepts.com

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