Optimizing Site Architecture: URL structure, Sitemaps, Internal linking

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Site architecture Overview – WebPro SEO

Site architecture refers to how well a website is organized: how pages can be accessed from anywhere within the site, how they interlink with each other. The main three features of site architecture include: Sitemap, URL structure and Internal Linking. Overall, site architecture is an important on-page SEO-factor which in part determines your site’s rankings.

URL Structure

Optimizing ULR structure is a quick yet extremely effective way to help site’s rankings and promote branding. This is especially simple to do on html websites, where all you need to do is to name the files as needed. If you have database-driven site (e.g., WordPress blog) you need to check Content Management System (CMS) help files or consult a specialist. WordPress CMS, for example, allows doing that easily by making use of a plugin. The idea of adjusting the pages’ ULR structure is to make them search engines- and user-friendly, and sticking to the following rules will help you:

  • Use the main page keyword, its variation or page title  tag in the URL

  • Use hyphens between the multiple words in the URLs

  • Make URLs short

  • Make URLs static (rather than dynamic)

  • Get rid of any unneeded data

 

EXAMPLES

Dynamic vs. Static
http:// www.mysite.com/services.php?id=43&cat=2&page=32 – dynamic URL
http:// www.mysite.com/hosting-packages.html – static URL

Unneeded data
http://mysite.com/category/category12/page2.html - ‘raw’
http://mysite.com/ category12/page2.html - cleaned

Catering for Non-Existing URLs

If you change URL structure to make it user-friendly or simply remove some pages when they no longer serve the purpose, the best way to take care non-existing URLs is by using 301 (or permanent) redirect. The power of this method is that if the old (non-existing) URL already ranked in search engines by using 301 redirect you can delegate its ranking to a new page (URL) that replaces the old one.

The way to setup 301 redirect depends on your web hosting and type of OS you have (Unix or Windows). So you should talk to your hosting support to help you. After you setup the permanent redirect make sure you check in a browser that the old URL gets redirected to the new one.

Sitemaps

Sitemap by itself doesn’t help you with ranking, but it helps search engines to find all you pages and get your site properly indexed. This is important, as non-indexed pages for search engines are like non-existing pages, and thus you may be missing on traffic coming from naturally ranking long-tail keywords contained on those pages.

Another method of how you can help search engines index your site by building links to all your pages, but sitemap is obviously an easier and less time-consuming way of doing it.

Google Sitemaps

You can submit your sitemap to your Google Webmaster panel, and this won’t only speed up indexing your site, but will also offer a number of additional data:
  • The last crawling time of your site
  •  List of indexed pages
  • Pages not indexed
  • Additional index stats
  • Internal linking analysis
  • Shortcuts to check your index status in Google
and more. Overall, Google sitemaps is an excellent way to pin point any crawling and/or indexation problem your site might be having and is surely worth using.

Internal Linking

Internal linking can have a small or a huge effect on site’s search engine rankings depending on its size (the bigger the site, the stronger the effect). Generally, there are three parts to the internal linking: site navigation, type of linking and use of anchor text.

Site Navigation

Site navigation is an essential part of on-site optimization and website usability. An efficient navigation structure would be if the menu items link to your category pages, and those in turn link to your deeper (subcategory and/or article) pages. It’s also common, especially on bigger sites, to have two menus – the main and secondary menus. The main menu includes category and article pages, whereas the secondary menu includes information pages such as About us, Contact us, FAQ, Disclaimer, Privacy Policy etc.

In-Context Linking

Practice shows that in-context links are more valuable in terms of passing juice than stand-alone links (e.g., links in the footer, sidebar or from linking pages). This is applicable to both internal and external (off-site) links.

As far as internal linking is concerned, you need to make sure that all related pages and keywords are interlinked with each other. Do not overdo it though, provide linking only where it’s required by the context and improves site usability (navigation, finding specific information etc.)

The beneficial effect of interlinking on rankings is especially profound for big sites with lots and lots of pages. If the site also has high trust and authority with search engines (like Wikipedia, for example) it may enjoy high rankings on long tail keywords without any backlinks at all.

Anchor Text

It is extremely important to use your main keywords when creating links to your site’s pages. When inbound links use the wrong anchor text (clickable text in a link) they are not informing the search engines what this site is about and thus link juice gets wasted. Having link with the wrong or irrelevant anchor text is like trying to hit a target blindfolded.

Ideally you want most of your backlinks with the right keyword pointing to the right pages on your website. However, the reality is that when people naturally put up links to your site, they often don’t bother about choosing the ‘right’ keyword and may use your site URL or words like “click here” etc. If that’s the case then in order for search engines to determine what is your site’s topic they use context surrounding the links on the donor sites (i.e. site linking to yours).

Therefore, having your links from topically related websites or at least from topically-related articles on other sites is very important to help your site rank on the relevant keywords. Here, if a lot of inbound links don’t use the right anchor text, proper on-page SEO maybe one of the decisive factors in helping your site rank.

Summary

Having a clear website structure – well-defined single-topic categories, subcategories and article pages within categories and/or subcategories is an effective way to make your site more user- and search engines friendly and thus improve its chances for better rankings.

Here internal linking is one of the most crucial aspects of site architecture – not only can smart internal lining speed up crawling of internal pages by search engines thus improving overall site indexing, it can also send link juice to the most important pages on your site thus improving their rankings. Finally, good internal linking also improves site navigation.

In summary:

  • Setup distinct categories including article on a single well-defined topic

  • Cross-link articles from various categories if they contain related information

  • Add categories into the main site’s menu

  • Have both internal linking and menu-navigation to maximize exposure of the most important site pages

  • Make use of sitemap to improve your site indexing and ease site navigation.


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On-Page SEO Factors – Optimizing On-Page Factors

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On-Page SEO Factors – WebPro SEO

As more and more value is being given by search engines to incoming links, on-page SEO alone can’t guarantee your site high rankings especially for high-competition terms, but it’s still among the most important ranking factors when it comes to low- or even medium-competitive keywords, and you can see the benefits of smart on-page SEO factors almost immediately.
 
Effective on-page SEO improves site’s usability and search-engine friendliness. It also determines how your site is indexed by the search engines helping them decide what your site is about. Finally, on-page SEO describes your site in search engine results, helping users to decide whether they want to visit it. All in all, by creating your site narrowly-focused and having your on-page SEO spot on, you can greatly help your site rankings.

There are 4 main on-page SEO factors to consider when doing your on-page SEO, and these are Title Tags, Meta Tags, Keyword Usage and Content Uniqueness. Let’s explain each of these in more details.

Title Tags

Title tag is the text that appears at the top of your browser window whenever you view a website. It is also seen as your site title in SERPs (Search Engine Result Pages) when users find it via a search query. Title tags, also referred to as Page Titles, help search engines to decide on the topical relevance of the page.

For best on-page SEO it’s essential to match the title tag and the page content by including the main keyword of the page into the title tag. Create short, clear and appealing title tags to attract attention of users and thus increase your site CTR (click-through-rates). Some people also include site’s name or site’s URL to help promote their brand.

Best title tags are those written for both users and search engines, and here are the guidelines to follow when creating your page titles:

  • Include page’s main keyword into the title tag

  • Use unique titles for every page

  • Make the titles short and clear

  • don’t stuff titles with keywords

  • Use different title structure for different types of pages (i.e. homepage, category pages and article pages)

  • Add site name or domain name for branding purposes

There are a number of title tag templates that you can use depending on the page type. We suggest the following scheme:

  • Homepage Title: Site name | Main Keyword(s)

  • Category Page Titles: Category Name | Main Keyword(s) | Site Name (or site URL)

  • Article Page Titles: Article Title | Site Name (or site URL)

Bear in mind that title tags are the most effective time investment you can make in your on-page SEO.

Meta Tags

Meta tags – meta description and meta keywords – are used to tell the search engines what your site pages are about. Despite the fact that they lost their seo value due to past abuse, they are still very important to help search engines determine site’s topic and hence enhance its chances of ranking for the targeted keywords.

And last but not least – the meta description tag is seen in SERPs as the snippet (site’s description) and hence strongly influences the readiness of users to visit your site.

Meta Description Tag

Meta description tag doesn’t have a direct effect on site rankings, yet it’s the second important (after title) tag in the on-page SEO efforts. Use the tips below when composing the pages’ meta descriptions:
  • Keep it short – between 50 to 150 characters, up to 2 sentences.
  • Use the main keyword of the page and its variations
  • Make it unique for each page
  • Make it clear and attractive, enticing search engine users to click on your URL
  • Include site’s name (or brand name) to help with branding.

Meta Keywords Tag

Most SEO expert will tell you that meta keyword tag has no significance whatsoever, yet it certainly doesn’t hurt to have it in place and these tips will tell you how:

  • Include only keywords relevant to the page topic

  • Include only keywords used in the page content

  • Use only a few keywords (up to 10 max), don’t stuff it

Keyword Usage

Effective keyword usage means matching the keywords with page content. Keyword usage is about how your keywords are utilized throughout the page text and ultimately determine the topical relevance of that page. On the one hand, writing your page content with only 1-2 keywords per page helps you stay laser-focused, and on the other hand, it allows you to write naturally, using keyword variations and related words (LSI).

All these helps search engines unambiguously determine topical relevance of your site and reward it with better rankings for the relevant keywords.

SEO Copywriting tips

Here is a summary of tips how to write your content to ensure proper keyword usage:

  • Have a single topic per page

  • 1-2 keywords per page

  • Write naturally to inform your users, not for search engines

  • Have the page’s main keyword in the Title tags

  • Use the page’s main keyword in Meta description

  • Use the page’s main keyword in meta keywords

  • Use the page’s main keyword and its variation in H1-H3 tags

  • Use the main keyword evenly throughout the page

  • Use the main keyword’s variations

  • Use related terms or LSI

  • Use fair keyword density (between 1-4%, whatever fits in naturally!)

Unique Content

Google has two index databases – main index and supplemental index. Main index contains all the web pages you can find by performing a search – they are the ones displayed in SERPs. Supplemental index content, on the contrary, is by default hidden from search engine users, and therefore is bound to oblivion.

There are 4 main reasons why a webpage can get into the supplemental index:
  • It has the same content as another web page (whether from your site or other site)
  • Absence of content on website (empty pages with only menu, navigation, sidebars etc.)
  • Site has orphaned pages - i.e. pages not linked to from anywhere (not even from within the site)
  • Non-user-friendly URL structure (e.g., URLs containing search parameters like mysite.com/products.php?id=21&cat=4&page=13 – also called dynamic URL)

While the latter two are to do with site architecture and outside the scope of this article, the first two factors can be handled by improving on-page SEO. Namely, if you find pages with duplicate content on your site, you should do one of the following things:
  • modify their content
  • add unique content to them or
  • remove those pages completely
Having duplicate content on your site, whether copied from other sites or simply duplicate pages featuring the same article (e.g., category pages and archive pages on blogs) cause search engines to penalize the site by putting these pages into supplemental index. This in turn may badly affect overall site rankings including the unique content pages. Therefore, to ensure your site may get high and stable rankings, you should find and remove all the duplicate pages on it as soon as possible.

Other On-Site Factors

There is a number of other on-page factors that are strictly speaking beyond the on-page SEO, namely - sitemap, url structure and internal linking. These belong to site architecture and will be discussed elsewhere.

In reality, search engines may have dozens of factors they use to determine sites’ rankings. Despite that, however, following the on-page SEO techniques presented here should be sufficient to optimize your site content to the extent that warrants the best position in SERPs achievable without backlinks. To improve your site rankings further you need to start building backlinks, but that is a subject of another article.



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SEO Optimized Content – Writing SEO Optimized Website Content

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SEO Optimized Content - WebPro SEO

SEO Optimized Content

In this article we are going to discuss how to create SEO optimized content by tying in your keywords with specific pages of your site while at the same time creating content for your users. This in turn means presenting content that provides your audience with maximum benefit and tightly focuses on the specific queries your visitors type in to find your site via search engines.

Search Engine’s View

The search engines consider a webpage relevant to the entered query if the page content is tightly focused around that specific keyword. Apparently, this is what users are looking for too. So from the search engine point of view it pays to optimize your site landing pages for one or maximum two keywords.
 
By doing this you help your audience to find what they are looking for quicker without the need to use site menu or search function. As a result, your user experience is improved which is reflected in their on-site behavior - they stay on your site longer and come back for more. That is, in turn, accounted for by search engines that offer your site better rankings.
 
Not only the inner pages tightly-focused around specific keywords receive better rankings, but in addition their high relevance also earns them natural backlinks from other webmasters and consequently boosts their rankings further.
 
When targeting long-tail keywords with low competition it’s best to match a dedicated page to a single keyword as this helps the page rank easier, and by having lots of such single-focused pages your site can enjoy tons of organic traffic without many or even any backlinks.

Matching Keywords to Pages

 To match keywords to pages you can follow this simple strategy:

  • Home page uses 1 to 3 of the most generic (‘theme’) keywords pertinent to your niche; they are usually highest traffic keywords as well
     
  • Match your primary keywords reflecting the major subtopics on your site to the Category pages, one per page;
     
  • Match your secondary keywords to internal pages with articles discussing specific issues/topics within a category; max 2-3 keywords per page.

The easiest way to do that is to split the full keyword list you composed while doing keyword research into 3 groups – homepage keywords, category keywords and article keywords. Here, using single and plural versions of the same keyword doesn’t smear page focus, so it’s safe to count single and plural forms as one keyword.

SEO Copywriting

Contrary to the common belief, SEO copywriting is not a trick to please search engines by using a specific keyword density and including a certain number of its variations. In fact, SEO copywriting is first and foremost targeted at the readers and looks to maximize their experience by providing narrowly-focused, informative content useful to the audience. If your articles provide this, they will automatically be loved by search engines!

What are the benefits of using the SEO copywriting approach?

·         First of all, tightly-focused content allows you to include keyword variations and LSI (related terms) naturally and easily

·         Narrowly-focused informative content often serves as a link bait, allowing you to get free backlinks form other webmasters reducing your backlinking efforts

And the good news is that you don’t need any special skill to become proficient at SEO copywriting. All that’s required is that you write naturally and clearly about one topic at a time.

However, if you struggle with copywriting in general, you can surely outsource the process of content creation provided you ask the copywriter to stick to the following guidelines:

  • Write on 1 topic per article with only 1 keyword
     
  • Write naturally without keyword stuffing and provide the reader with helpful information related to their query (keyword)
     
  • Make sure they use quality, rich language and engaging style.

Finally, if you have a new site then once your content is ready, you can upload it and schedule for publishing straight away.

What if You Have an Existing Website?

However, if you have an existing website, you need to go through your site pages and find all chunks and pieces unrelated or poorly related to the primary keywords of those pages. Once found – remove, rearrange, or rewrite those paragraphs following the guidelines given above for a new site (1-2 keywords per article, narrow-focused, natural and informative).

If you did your keyword research properly, rewriting or even tweaking selected paragraphs should do the job. If that, however, seems difficult, you may need to replace the existing articles with the new ones written with SEO copywriting in mind.

 

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