how to create seo friendly website architechure

What Should You Focus On?

Content Silos Content Depth

Internal Linking Duplicate Content

Categories and Tag Usage Copyright 2017 Web Savvy Marketing @rebeccagill

Why Should You Care?

Crawling and Indexing Search Engine Signals Usability for Humans

Copyright 2017 Web Savvy Marketing @rebeccagill

Content Silos


A content silo (or SEO silo) is a method of grouping related content together to organize content and to establish the website’s keyword-based themes.


Think back to your last visit to a library – you know before Kindles and iPads existed. How did the library staff help you find books of interest? They grouped content into sections such as fiction or nonfiction. Well, guess? That is a content silo, but the old school kind

Copyright 2017 Web Savvy Marketing

7

CONTENT SILOS ARE IMPORTANT

TO BOTH SEO AND USABILITY


Barnes and Noble groups content into subject matter areas so you can easily find what you are looking for when you visit their website or physical store.

An Example of a Content Silo


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SUBJECT MATTER AREAS FOR BOOKS

Architecture & Photography Bibles & Christianity Biography Business Cookbooks Food & Wine Fiction Graphic Novels & Comics Diet Health & Fitness History Mystery & Crime Religion Romance Science Fiction & Fantasy Self-Help & Relationships Sports Thrillers Westerns


Break the Silo Down Further


Art

Design

History

Technique

Business

Accoun4ng• Audi4ng• Bookkeeping• Taxa4on

HumanResources

Marke4ng&Sales

SmallBusiness

Fic4on

Thrillers

War&Military

Women’sFic4on

History

African

Asian

European

Russian

Sports

Basketball

Golf

Hockey

barnesandnoble.com/b/books/accounting/auditing/

While most people would assume the company does this for ease of use for their buyers, they also do this for search engines.


Search engines want to know what your website is about, how it is structured, and where content is located.

Content silos help with this effort by providing a set of structure to content that mimics that of old-school index cards at the library.

Organization Matters


Content silos help search engines because just like the human visitor, search engines need to have a good understanding of your website’s content.

Content silos help provide relevance.

Keyword relevancy (or the level of importance) is based on the page’s content as well as the relevance of the entire website. If I want to rank for the term SEO, it would be much easier for me if I had a section of content in my website about SEO related topics and not just one page. Having topical content helps support the website’s overall authority and thus an individual page’s rank.

Relevance Matters


It is easier for search engines to find and deliver relevant content when it is focused and organized around topics.


Yoga Studio

More Sitemap Examples


Travel Blog

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EXAMPLES OF CONTENT SILO URL STRUCTURES

Examples of the Yoga website:

yogabliss.com/studios/new-york/ yogabliss.com/studios/chicago/ yogabliss.com/studios/dallas/ yogabliss.com/studios/orlando/ yogabliss.com/classes/yoga-rx/ yogabliss.com/classes/pilates/ yogabliss.com/classes/vinyasa/ yogabliss.com/classes/hot-yoga/

Examples of the Vegas blog:

vegasbaby.com/hotels/mgm-grand/ vegasbaby.com/hotels/bellagio/ vegasbaby.com/hotels/wynn/ vegasbaby.com/hotels/venetian/ vegasbaby.com/hotels/luxor/ vegasbaby.com/shows/cirque-de-soleil/ vegasbaby.com/shows/david-copperfield/ vegasbaby.com/shows/elton-john/ vegasbaby.com/shows/blue-man-group/ vegasbaby.com/shows/carrot-top/


Content Depth


¡  Create silos and layers that will support your SEO efforts and create a positive experience for the human visitor. One means nothing without the other.

¡  Create balance in your site so one section doesn’t overshadow another section. You don’t want one section taking up 75% of your site.

¡  Keep your layers limited, and if possible, no more than three clicks from the home page. This is for both usability and for crawling by search engines.

¡  Shorter URLs are preferred for crawling and real world usage, so watch the length of your content silos and don’t over do it.

Content Depth Matters


Dyno Mapper is my favorite tool for viewing content.

Visualizing Your Content


Let’s dig into Dyno Mapper!


Internal Linking


Internal links are links that go from one page on a domain to a different page on the same domain. ¡  They are one of the most underused SEO tools. ¡  They allow users to navigate a website and find important

information. ¡  They help establish information hierarchy for the given website. ¡  They help spread ranking power within the website or blog, thus

they add in boosting the ranking of the destination content. ¡  They help search engines discover and index content. ¡  The alt text within links help search engines better understand

content.

Internal Links are Powerful


Here is Google’s statement on internal links and their display within the reports of Google Search Console:

“The number of internal links pointing to a page is a signal to search engines about the relative importance of that page.

If an important page does not appear in this list, or if a less important page has a relatively large number of internal links, you should consider reviewing your internal link structure.”


¡  Link your home page to your most valuable content. ¡  Have a structured process for linking to your cornerstone content

often. ¡  Use descriptive alt text when linking. ¡  Make sure your alt text clearly describes the destination URL. ¡  Remember your keywords of the destination URL and use them

within the alt text where possible. ¡  Avoid read more, click here, and other generic phrases. ¡  Interlink related content – Yoast’s premium plugin helps with this

now and is very useful for these efforts.

Internal Linking Tips


Alt Text in Links are Powerful


Duplicate Content


¡  eCommerce filters ¡  Session IDs ¡  Pay per click specific pages ¡  Comment pagination ¡  Printer friendly pages ¡  www vs. non-www ¡  Scraped content ¡  Distributed product descriptions in eCommerce ¡  Content syndication

How Does Duplicate Content Happen?


¡  Write unique content and don’t just copy in your manufacturer’s description

¡  Stop reposting your content to multiple sites ¡  Rel="canonical” ¡  301 redirect duplicate content to the real content ¡  Set PPC pages to noindex, nofollow ¡  Ditch the printer friendly pages and use a print style sheet instead ¡  Check Google Search Console for meta issues or use Dyno Mapper

to export your entire site to Excel so you can sort by title

How to Fix Duplicate Content


Categories & Tags


¡  Each blog post should have one category (maybe two) and multiple tags where applicable.

¡  Categories and tags should be used to help visitors find like content.

¡  Categories and tags should only be used when you will have multiple articles that fall within a phrase.

¡  Categories and tags should not compete with pages. Don’t use the same phrases for a page and category or tag.

¡  Don’t throw in fifty tags on one post. This rarely provides value to the user and instead simply creates clutter, thin pages, and duplicate content.

Category & Tag Tips


¡  Category pages can rank for search so select them with care! ¡  Take time to complete meta titles and descriptions for categories

and tags. This helps them rank. ¡  Avoid using categories in your post URLs. This creates a lot of issues

should you switch the main category. ¡  If you remove categories or tags remember to use 301 redirects! ¡  Whenever you consider adding a new category or tag, stop and ask

yourself if this will be hopeful to your human visitor. If the answer is no, don’t do it.

Category & Tag Tips


Questions?


@rebeccagill RebeccaGill.com

The To the Top course is an eight hour online course for DIY SEO education. Course includes videos, how-to tutorials, template downloads, and quizzes. diySEOcourses.com

Three day intensive SEO training workshop taking place in May of 2017. Learn my SEO process from start to finish in an interactive classroom setting. SEObootcamp.com

Three days of SEO training in a virtual classroom. Taking place in April of 2017. Learn my SEO process from the comfort of your own home or office. ithemes.com/seo-summit/

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