Why Site Structure Is Important?

Time and time again over the years, I have seen students take their established sites to entirely new levels of traffic, simply by making the right kind of adjustments to the way their sites were structured.

These days, everyone seems to think that SEO is all about getting links. Now I’m not saying that links aren’t important, but in most of these cases, they hadn’t even begun to work on link building.

Most of these increases in traffic have come from improvements we made in the structure of the web site itself - and this kind of result isn’t all that unusual. In fact, site structure is probably the most overlooked and misunderstood aspect of SEO.

While most of your competitors are still trying to use a “sledgehammer” approach, and overwhelming the search engines with massive quantities of inbound text links, you can gain a tremendous advantage by paying attention to how your site is linked together.

Link building certainly magnifies the benefit of a good site structure, but the reverse is also true: good site structure greatly amplifies the benefit of your investment in link building.

There are four primary goals in structuring, or restructuring, a web site:

1. Improving the user experience is your first goal, because this leads to higher conversion rates, happy customers, etc. If I ever have to choose between creating a good user experience and an SEO objective, I will choose my site’s visitors every time.
2. Improving the “crawlability” of the site and channeling “link juice” (PageRank at Google, other search engines have their own formulas) into the most important pages – the ones that you’re trying to get ranked in search results. One method we use for this is called dynamic linking.
3. Increasing the ranking of individual web pages within the site, and “broadening the profile” of our most important pages. By using the “anchor text” of our own internal links, and adding the right links in strategic places, we can boost our own search engine rankings.
4. Getting more pages into the search engines’ index, also known as “index penetration.” Every additional page that gets indexed adds to our ability to improve our rankings, and in fact makes it easier to increase index penetration.

It shouldn’t be terribly shocking that the four stages of the “site structure” step are mapped against these four goals.

Optimize Your Web Content

Search engines don’t read like humans. We actually make sense of the individual words and their combinations (phrases, sentences, paragraphs, pages, page hierarchies, etc). We even read between the lines and take all visual design and aural elements into account.Search Engines aren’t that sophisticated even Google. In fact, they don’t really process meaning at all, they categorize a site’s subject matter based on the words that are used most often in the body copy, headings, links, etc. So content optimization is simply the act of using your target keyword phrases frequently on your site and in the places that matter. ‘Target keyword phrases’ being the words your target customers are searching for when they’re looking for your product or service.

When you optimize your website for a particular word, you’re essentially telling the search engines to include you in the results when people search for that word.As a rule of thumb, the more frequently you use your keywords, the more relevant you’ll be considered by the search engines, and the more likely you are to appear in searches for those words.

Why Create A Great Web Content?

Why is content so important? Well, firstly,your visitors want great content. Without it, they won’t stay long, they won’t come back, and you’re unlikely to convert much of your traffic into revenue. And secondly, great content attracts backlinks. Webmasters will want to link to it.And as you now know, backlinks are the single biggest factor you can manipulate to generate a high ranking.

What’s more, when webmasters voluntarily link to your content because of its quality, those links tend to:

• Come from related sites
• Come from quite a few trusted, important sites
• Point at the page containing your content which may be quite deep in your page hierarchy, not just your Home page
• Be keyword rich, because webmasters naturally use the anchor text to describe the content of the target page
• Have varying anchor test, because each webmaster will describe your content differently

And what would you know? These are exactly the sorts of links that the search engines like to see, because they prove you're part of a credible network of related sites. When a search engine sees a link that satisfies most or all of these conditions, it gives a lot of weight. A handful of links like this is worth hundreds of links from low-ranking/spammy sites, all with the same anchor text.

How To Resolve Duplicate Content Problems

You have more than one version of any page - Multiple versions of the same page is clearly duplicate content. Ex. A print-friendly version and the regular display version.) The risk is that Google may choose the wrong one to display in the SERPs.

• Solution: Use a no_follow link to the print-friendly version. This will ensure that Google’s bots don’t crawl it, and that it won’t be indexed. The HTML of a nofollow link looks like this: <a href="page.htm" rel="nofollow">go to page</a>
• Or use your robots.txt file to tell the search bots not to crawl the print friendly version.

You reference any page with more than one URL - Even though there’s really only one page, the search engines interpret each discrete URL as a different page. The reason for this problem is No canonical URL specified. A canonical URL is the master URL of your home page. The one that displays whenever your home page displays. For most sites, it would be http://www.yourdomain.com. Test if your site has a canonical URL specified. Open your browser and visit each of the following URLs:

• http://www.yourdomain.com/
• http://yourdomain.com/
• http://www.yourdomain.com/index.html/
• http://yourdomain.com/index.html/

If your homepage displays, but the URL stays exactly as you typed it, you have not specified a canonical URL, and you have duplicate content.

• Solution: Choose one of the above as your canonical URL. It doesn’t really matter which one. Then redirect the others to it with 301 redirects. Read more here 301 Redirects.
• Specify your preferred domain in Google Webmaster Tools (you have to register first). To do this, at the Dashboard, click your site, then click Settings and choose an option under Preferred domain. This is the equivalent of a 301 redirect for Google. But it has no impact on the other search engines, so you should still set up proper 301 redirects.

Someone has plagiarize your content - If someone has plagiarized your content, Google may mistakenly identify their plagiarized version as the original. This is unlikely,however, because most webmasters who plagiarize content are unlikely to have a very credible, authoritative site.

• Solution: You can contact the offender and ask that they remove the content, and you can also report the plagiarism to Google (http://www.google.com/dmca.html). You can also proactively monitor who’s plagiarizing your content using Copyscape.

You syndicate content - If you publish content on your site and also syndicate it,your site’s version may not appear in the SERPs. If one of the sites that has reprinted your article has more domain authority than yours, their syndicated version may appear in the SERPs instead of yours.Also, other webmasters may link to the syndicated version instead of yours.

• Solution: One way to try and avoid this situation is to always publish the article on your site a day or two before you syndicate it. Another is to always link back to the original from the syndicated. Whatever the case, the backlink from the syndicated article still contributes to your ranking. You just may not get as much direct search-driven traffic to the article which really isn’t the point of content syndication, anyway.

Avoid Duplicate Content In Your Website/Blog

You have duplicate content when:

• You have more than one version of any page
• You reference any page with more than one URL
• Someone plagiarizes your content
• You syndicate content

And it’s a problem for two reasons:

1. Duplicate content filter - Let’s say there are two pages of identical content out there on the Web. Google doesn’t want to list both in the SERPs, because it’s after variety for searchers. The duplicate content filter identifies the pages, then Google applies intelligence to decide which is the original. It then lists only that one in the SERPs. The other one misses out. Problem is, Google may choose the wrong version to display in the SERPs. There’s no such thing as a duplicate content penalty.
2. PageRank dilution – Some webmasters will link to one page/URL and some will link to another, so your PageRank is spread across multiple pages, instead of being focused on one. Note, however, that Google claims that they handle this pretty well, by consolidating the PageRank of all the links.

Truth About Making Dynamic URLs to Static URLs

When a site’s content is called from a database, its URLs are normally generated. You can tell if a URL is dynamic because it’ll have characters like “?”, “=” and “&” in it. This is typical of sites that utilize a Content Management System (CMS) - including blogs. Example:

http://www.website.com/main.php?category=books&subject=biography

Static URLs, on the other hand, are tied to their content, and are generally a combination of the page’s filename and directory location. Example:

http://www.website.com/projects.htm

The 3 main problems with dynamic URLs are:

1. They can lead to duplicate content issues.
2. Search engines can have trouble reading them properly
3. They reduce click-thrus from search engine results, they’re harder to remember, share and write down, they’re easily clipped, they’re often not keyword rich, and they often don’t give readers any clue about what to expect at the destination site.

These issues can be overcome by rewriting your dynamic URLs in such a way that they become static. For example, the following dynamic URL:

http://www.website.com/main.php?category=books&subject=biography

Could be rewritten to become the following static URL:

http://www.website.com/pagebooks-biography.htm

Unfortunately, static URL rewriting is not without risks of its own. If done incorrectly, it can cause Google problems crawling and indexing your pages. Google now outrightly advocates dynamic URLs:

Providing search engines with dynamic URLs should be favored over hiding parameters to make them look static.Of course, it’s important to remember that Google’s a public company, answerable to shareholders. It’s ability to crawl and index dynamic URLs better than its competitors is a significant competitive advantage, if leveraged. My advice is, if you’re using a CMS that doesn’t offer trustworthy dynamic URL rewriting, stick with dynamic URLs. If, however, your CMS rewrites dynamic URLs very well (e.g. WordPress or any CMS using mod_rewrite), then consider rewriting to static URLs - if it will help your customers and aid your promotions significantly. Rewriting dynamic URLs isn’t likely to have a huge impact on your rankings, so I would avoid it unless I was sure it wasn’t going to cause problems.

Check For Broken Links

Broken links are bad for visitors because they convey the impression that your site is not well maintained, and they‘re bad for SEO because they can stop the search engine bots from crawling all your pages.Note that Google specifically advises webmasters to check for broken links. It’s entirely possible that Google views broken links as a sign that your site is in poor repair, just as human visitors do,and that the existence of broken links may impact your ranking simply because Google wants well maintained sites at the top of its SERPs. You can use a tool called Xenu to find broken links. It’s simple to use and the reports are self-explanatory.

Add Titles To Internal Links

HTML links can include a Title which becomes a tool tip when a visitor hovers their mouse over the link.They’re also read out by screen readers for the vision-impaired people. Because this aids accessibility and helps reduce visitor disorientation, and because it’s indicative of the content of the destination page, search engines crawl it and it plays a part in how they index the page. Link titles look like this:
<a href="http://www.example.com/products.htm" title="Cheap Products">Products</a>

Optimize Your Internal Links

For search engine bots, text links are like doorways from page to page and site to site. This means websites are generally better indexed by search engines if their bots can traverse the entire site using text links. But there’s more to it than that. Links from top level pages like the ‘Home’ and ‘Products’pages carry more weight than links from lower level pages (e.g. the ‘5 tips to stay older’ page).The logic here is that if you link to a page from a top level page, you obviously want a lot of your visitors to see that link, so it must be key to your subject matter and business model.

Internal links also tell the search engines what pages are important. In other words, if you link to a page again and again and again, and you use meaningful anchor text, Google will assume that page is a core part of your subject matter, and index you accordingly. What’s more,every time you link to a page, it’s passed a bit of PageRank. Link to it enough, and it will become one of your higher ranking pages, as it develops ‘link equity’.

Limit links to fewer than 100 per page. Jakob Nielsen’s advice is ''include links to other resources that are directly relevant to the current location. Don't bury the user in links to all site areas or to pages that are unrelated to their current location.” Place your links prominently on each page. The search engines pay more attention to links toward the top of the page, and visitors are OK with prominent links too.Consider adding a nofollow to links that point to less important pages, so that the search engines don’t visit those pages. This increases the relative link equity of all your other pages. 

A nofollow looks like this: <a href="page1.htm" rel="nofollow">Go To Page 1</a>

Create Lots Of Content And Update Your Site/Blog Regularly

In Google’s eyes,it is unlikely that a rarely updated site with minimal content is going to be helpful to visitors. The other search engines like to see lots of content, and they like to see it updated regularly.Fortunately, that approach goes hand-in-hand with the most effective link building method, ‘link baiting’. Content is one of link baiting’s two core components (the other being social media). Of course, I’m not talking any old rubbish, here. I’m talking useful, unique, high quality content. That’s the only sort that works.

Position Your Content Toward The Top of HTML Code

When the search engines look at your page, they don’t actually see the display version that you and I read. They read only the HTML behind the page. But they’re like us one key respect; they pay more attention to words at the top. They figure that is where the most important words will be.

What’s more, if there are two links on a page to the same target page,Google appears to only take the anchor text of the first into consideration when indexing.So by placing your content toward the top of the page of code, you ensure that the keywords and links within are properly taken into account when your pages are indexed.

It’s quite common for web developers to code pages such that elements like images, sidebars, JavaScript (including Google Analytics code) and even footers appear above content in the code.The page still displays correctly to visitors - just not to the search engines. This can bury your content 1000 words or more down the page of code. There’s absolutely no reason for this to happen. All of these elements can be coded after your content, especially if your developers are using Cascading Style Sheets (CSS), as they should. Note that by placing your JavaScript toward the bottom of the page of code (e.g. before the </body> tag), you’ll make your page load faster for visitors and they won’t have to sit and wait for the code to run before the page displays. But there’s a trade-off. With your Google Analytics code loading late, it may not register all visits because people may leave quickly, closing the page before the Analytics code has finished running.

Choose The Right Web Host

Search engine bots don’t use websites the way you and I do. They need your site to be designed and built in a particular way. If you don’t do it right, you can severely hamper your search engine presence.

So here’s why you are going to choose a right web host. Google shows different search results to different people,depending on where they’re searching from.This is particularly true of shopping-type searches for goods that are likely to be purchased in person (as opposed to online). For example, if you search “bank” in the Google US, you’ll probably see Bank of America at number 1, whereas if you search “bank” in Google Australia, you’ll probably see The Commonwealth Bank. When deciding what sites to display, Google considers where each is hosted. It assumes that Americans will want to see American banks, and that American banks probably host their websites with American web hosts.

Put simply, if you’re after visitors from a particular country, choose a web host with servers in that country. And if you’re after visitors from a particular city, choose a web host with servers in that city. And the best way is to submit your site to the search engines’ local business centers because more and more people are narrowing their searches to the local area. So if local search traffic is important to your site, then you should definitely register your business to Google Local Business Center (Google Maps), Microsoft Local Listing Center and Yahoo Local. You also need to use the geographic targeting tool in Google Webmaster Tools to tell Goggle what geographic location your business targets. This won't affect your ranking in the normal results,but it will help ensure your listing displays appropriately for searchers who use advanced search.