Latest posts by Mike Escott (see all)
- 5 Reasons Why Not to Write List Style Posts - October 24, 2012
- Site Structure – The Missing Part of the SEO Puzzle - July 2, 2012
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When it comes to SEO there seem to be 2 main camps, those who belong to Team Backlinks and those who belong to Team Content. Until recently Team Backlinks seemed to be ahead but then Google changed the game and those with spammy backlink profiles have seen their rankings plummet… as have those with spammy content.
The trouble with sitting in one of these camps is that you miss the complete picture and so will always hit a glass ceiling by only focusing on one element or the other. The truth is that a site with good content and a good backlink profile will perform much better than those who have one or the other. As with much in life, the key here is to strike a balance. If you are able to create good content for your site then you are also able to create good content for another site and get a good quality link in the bargain.
This reasonable advice will be lost as the argument between the two camps continues to rage but there is a third camp that you barely hear anyone shout about. Team Structure is full of quiet individuals who know that the other two teams are missing something and the reason they will remain quiet about it is because knowledge is power and they have the key that makes a successful SEO campaign… Why would they want to shout about it?
A search engines objective is to return relevant and useful results to the user. This means that your site just needs to tick two boxes, one for relevance and one for usefulness. These are both subjective to the users search and a search engines job is to see if your site really is worth returning to the user. It will look at keywords and backlinks to help it decide but also it will look at the structure of your site.
Internal linking and site structure plays a huge part in how a search engine determines what your site is about.
Silos
The most common internal links are found in your sites navigational menus. How you organise this navigation is very important, it should be logical and tidy without getting too deep. The technique of creating a relevant hierarchy of structure is known as silioing and it’s as simple as placing your content into logical parent/child relationships.
For example:
Wine Homepage > Wines > By Country > Red/White > Product
This structure would lead to a url that is easy for a search engine to understand that could something like this:
www.winesite.com/italian-wine/italian-red-wine/some-bottle-name
For each page in the URL you would need to include a unique and relevant title and description, don’t get lazy with this! The titles and descriptions should be relevant to each page and they help the search engines decide what each individual page is all about.
Avoid keyword stuffing the titles and descriptions, just get the main keywords in there and then build and expand on these in the page content.
The idea here is that the search engine will take into account the titles, descriptions and content of each page contained in the URL. We go from a broad site about wine to a page offering Italian wines to a page offering Italian red wine and then to a product page offering a specific Italian red wine. Can there be any room for doubt that the pages contained within this URL are relevant and useful to people searching for Italian wine, Italian red wine and a specific Italian wine?
Internal Anchors
So that’s silo structure and it really helps build relevance but we can’t really clutter up our navigation or URL’s with long tail keywords. Say we wanted to target a bunch of keywords such as:
- Premier Italian Wines
- Fine Italian Wines
- Wine for Italian Food
- Excellent Italian Wine
We wouldn’t really want to put these in our main navigation as it would get confusing for the user. These are terms we want to rank for without changing our silo structure.
Team Backlinks would rush out and start building backlinks using these anchors but post Panda/Penguin this is a risky strategy!
Team Content would say use these in the content of pages, maybe highlight a few of them with <em> or <strong> tags. This is a less risky strategy but won’t yield the same results as backlinks, you can only mention a keyword a number of times on a page before you risk it looking spammy.
So what is the answer?
The answer is again in how you link internally. This time though instead of using the navigation we build our own contextual links placed in the sites content. These can and should be placed all over your site and will still look and read naturally, in fact it is natural to link from one wine page to another saying why not try these excellent Italian wines or take a look at our premier Italian wines.
Adding a blog to your site will increase the opportunities you get to build internal anchors.
I have had some amazing results without paying much attention to backlinks or keyword density just buy how I structure a site and set up the internal links… I’m talking page one and two for many keywords within a couple of weeks.
Once this has been done you can then see which keywords could use a little boost by focusing on creating a few high quality backlinks.
I hope this has been helpful for you, you can visit my blog for more SEO Tips at http://www.uk-small-business-seo.co.uk
![DiTesco of IBlogZone the SEO Guru Who Helps You Succeed Online [Featured Blogger]](http://cdn.comluv.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/Ditesco.jpg)
Thanks for posting. Here you suggested three things i.e site architecture, content and link. I think theses three is major part of SEO. Thanks for posting
Pulkit recently posted..Grade 10 – Science and Math Combo
Thank you for this interesting read. Your endeavor in solving the SEO puzzle is much appreciable. Internal links is an important facet of SEO and organizing the navigation I very much agree is quite important. But my question is how do we do so in a perfect way? After the new Panda/penguin updates isn’t maintaining a particular keyword density important?
Twitter: SmallWebBiz
I wouldn’t worry too much about keyword density and focus more on variety. Repeating a particular phrase too often can be seen as spammy and work against you. There is no perfect density, some niches are more trusted than others. If you wrote about Viagra then it’s like that Google will have a far less tolerant level for keyword density for phrases than it would for another niche that is considered less spammy. Just make sure it reads naturally, you make good use of meta tags and link to relevant internal and external content.
Mike Escott recently posted..Why Copyscape is Not Enough to Avoid Plagiarism
Great read! I do think directory submissons are over rated with alot of people! With the latest Google panda update alot of these have now been ignored which means we should consider other methods.
Twitter: GeekandJock
I belong to both Team Backlink and Team Content
Never put all your eggs in the one basket and ensure everything looks (and is) a natural mix of organic activity.
One thing you guys need to be aware of when it comes to internal linking is the Google First Link Priority rule when a page links more than once to the same target page, Google will completely ignore all links after the first, often with negative SEO consequences.
As an example, if you have a menu item of ‘Blog’ going to your blog and you insert a keyword anchor text somewhere in a post, that anchor text is going to be ignored by MrG as it’s going to be a subsequent repeat of a URL it’s already picked up on.
That said, go click my Erectile Dysfunction post for a change from SEO stuff hahaha
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Twitter: SmallWebBiz
It’s true that page rank won’t be passed to multiple links on the same page to the same destination page but multiple links pointing to the same page are good navigation for users and gives Google some more information when it comes to relevance. I also like to use the title attribute within my links to give a little more information once again. You need to be careful not to overdo it, as with all SEO, but in my experience good use of internal linking helps target a variety of keywords and phrases for the same destination page.
Mike Escott recently posted..SEO Tips – Commentluv & Penguin (A word of warning!)
Welll, I think the overall stuff related to Link comes under the category of Offline Page Optimization and it plays an important role to enhance the PR of the site/blog etc..Content is one of the most important part of SEO which shows the quality of the page and Search engines Automatically focus the worth of the blogs/site to the visitors.
Twitter: makemyblogmoney
Team Content seems to be the team for me these days! Hey everyone! Mike is awesome at SEO, you should let him work for your site and get it where it needs to be! This guy is a genius! Great post Mike! See ya on the forums.
Wade Harman recently posted..Forget The Search Engines! Get Traffic Through Referrals!
Twitter: SmallWebBiz
Thanks Wade! Sorry haven’t been so active lately on forums etc, hectic with work, freelancing and moving to Spain for the summer this Weds! Hopefully I’ll get a bit more time for it if I’m not too busy enjoying a break in the sun!
thanks Mike, I am going to try the internal linking from my blog (avoiding the most competitive of terms). Having spent a ton of money on content with limited results I am now focusing on good backlinks.
I catch your idea. I have a question. Does changing the URL structure will affect our index before? If we change the URL structure, there will be missng link in google index. Is that correct? So what will happen to our PR then ?
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Twitter: SmallWebBiz
Yes you are right, if you change the URL structure then any page rank from external deep links could be lost. Most links will be pointing to the homepage so all is not lost. You could set up a 404 that redirects to your homepage to send any dead link juice back to the homepage or a 301 redirect to redirect individual pages may be better for popular internal pages with a lot of links. A site audit of your incoming links should help you find any incoming links and where they are pointing too.
i had a bad experience changing my url structure
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Twitter: india_darshan
We can see how much competition is going on in SEO everyone wants to see their site on top in search engine but everyone can’t win in this. Beside that if you have originality in your site then no one can stop you for achieve new milestones.
Sam recently posted..Book Hotels
Twitter: SmallWebBiz
That’s true, there are limited top spots… That’s why keyword research is so important to pick realistic keywords to compete for. Good SEO will help you rank for long tails that you are not targeting too.
Useful stuff, thanks! I totally second a comment here that said it is never a good idea to put all your eggs in one basket. Authority backlinks, and quality content – both are equally important aspects of a strong, effective and ultimately successful SEO campaign!
Dan recently posted..How to Get Organic Traffic from Google
I like what Mike said about people not getting the big picture. Its not just on page seo or off page seo, it is both! It is about looking natural to Google and creating fresh relevant content. Only focusing on one SEO task will definitely not get you as far as focusing on all of them!
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“As with much in life, the key here is to strike a balance.” So true! A balance really does guarantee that if one method fails, you still have 2, 3, or 4 other things going for you. When I first started, I focused on content only, not understanding the importance of backlinks. Obviously it didn’t hurt me, but once I started using backlinks and creating relationships and other things besides content, I found that my site did better and it stayed strong throughout all the ups and downs of Google’s updates.
And, with my new site, using this method has proved to be effective right from the get-go. So, yeah, balance is really key.
Excellent article.
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Twitter: SmallWebBiz
We have a saying in the UK, “Have a finger in every pie!”. SEO is holistic, you need to focus on every angle as much as the next.
Mike Escott recently posted..Why Copyscape is Not Enough to Avoid Plagiarism
It’s true that good seo is very important. But some time its too hard to do it. I like what you said, and its very useful stuff. Thanks mike.
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Nice info Mike Escott, I agree with you. The ability to manage navigation very importan. It’s very useful for the convenience of reader an also to increase the traffic.
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“great read I do think directory submissions are over rated with a lot of people! With the latest Google panda update a lot of these have now been ignored which means we should consider other methods”.
Twitter: SmallWebBiz
Directories haven’t been ignored but when submitting you must consider 2 things… First. does the directory have any kind of editorial process or can anyone get a link? If anyone can get a link then it’s likely this will be a low quality link. Also be careful of link velocity when doing directory submissions, a few a month is fine but many in a short period of time is a bad thing as there are many automated software solutions that can do this for you and it will look like spam to Googlle.
Thanks for the great article. Indeed lately I have seen one site I Silo structured just as you suggested rising in the SERPS. I built it before the updates and gave up on it after 6 months of work with no rankings. Now another 6 months later I noticed it is steadily picking up rankings.
You have confirmed my suspicions about it
Cheers,
Karson
Twitter: smuggecko
Great article Mike.
The recent google changes seem to be confusing a lot of people. Beginners and pros alike. Prior to the shake up, keyword linking was a prime SEO tool. Now we are seeing content driven linking. I know alot of people are testing the boundaries of the changes and I am very interested to see what google now considers as keyword stuffing and over optimized linking.
Either way you look at it all, content was and still is key.
TomW recently posted..SEO Infographic – Black Hat Monsters of SEO
Twitter: SmallWebBiz
Thanks Tom… and thanks for the offer to guest post! I am interested, have just moved to Spain so been a little busy.. Will be in touch soon!
Mike Escott recently posted..Why Copyscape is Not Enough to Avoid Plagiarism
Twitter: androbana
thanks for writing and sharing this post. Now I know that site structure is important element to get a best SEO.
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SEO is good i am try to understand it and now days i am learning about internet money and make my own blog.
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Yeah, you are right absolutely. Since in earlier times, people used to spin 1 article and submit that same content over hundred of places. That practice filled internet with lot of unwanted information. Now Google is going to pay emphasis to those sites that submit good content over internet which is useful to readers. Automated backlink creation might only help you in short term but with time, only those sites that have submitted good content and have built links manually will reign.
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Great Stuff Mike, never heard about that silos thing before. But definitely internal links are something to count for.
Hey Mike, the importance of Search Engine Optimization to make a good PR can’t be express in some words. We can say it, it is as like as a mother to her child. Seo work isn’t very hard. Its quite simple to do only if you know what to do. Mike i really appreciate your writing. You wrote really nice. Thanks for sharing this article. Jobs Qube.
Difficult to work your way through SEO, there are so many different opinions. The one that I think will work is to do a mixture of everything. Everyone knows that Google wants to see natural links and good content, therefore links should be a mixture of internal, social media, bookmarking sites and forums. This is how links would naturally be formed. Good content is merely the key to get these natural links. People will want to link to good content.
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The article is good. As describe in the image, I thought, there is something more in the site structure, other than internal linking. Internal linking is one of the vital element in SEO now a days. Thanks for sharing.
Pritam Nagrale recently posted..Why There is Only 1% Affiliate Marketers as Compared to Adsense Publishers in India
Twitter: SmallWebBiz
That’a not actually my image, I suspect that’s something that Andy created for this posted… That guy is switched on when it comes to marketing opportunities!
Twitter: SmallWebBiz
Typo-tastic!
Thanks Mike, a lot of useful information there. Learned something new
Twitter: selfishyayun
I like to read your first article here.
This is my simple way to show nice structure for my blog. If you know about breadcrumb, you must use this breadcrumb plugin. RDFA Breadcrumb.
This plugin can show or content like you write not only on your blog but on Google search too.
I believe this is good plugin for seo.
Thank you
selfishyayun recently posted..Maksimalkan Crawl dengan Google XML Sitemaps
Twitter: vipinsoni24
i appreciate your point “Internal linking and site structure plays a huge part in search engines” as it minimize your site’s complexity. thanks for writing this wonderful article
vipin soni recently posted..Some best Tips to pick a right domain name – SEO tips
Site structure is almost an art. Everyone has their own preference and I believe that not all structures work the same for every site. Great tips, thanks for sharing!
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Hello Mike,
You have really done a great Job, honestly i never know about the Importance of Internal Linking and Permalink structure ( as mentioned navigation is post) is so important in SEO, and Yes Google is now ignoring the Backlink and some authority of post, what they look for is just the good and helpful content. At end Thank you for Post.
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Another rule people should follow is making sure that each page on their site is linked to by at least one other page on their site. People should be able to navigate around freely, and if people can find their way around, so too can the search engines!
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I recently started to use a silo structure on some of my sites as a test. I found that the Seo Ultimate plugin is really nice for these type of setups. They have a silo category widget that will take care of your structure. It can also create internal links between post based on tags or categories.
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Twitter: SmallWebBiz
Love that plugin… Everyone seems to go for Yoast these days but I stick with SEO Ultimate.
Mike Escott recently posted..New Site Launched
Internal linking structure does play a key role in page indexing. I have always wondered how to make sure all pages within the website easily accessible from the homepage and also making it SEO friendly. I try my best to dedicate time to both content and getting quality backlinks (dofollow and nofollow). I also read somewhere that Google does not what to see more than 100 links on any given page. I have this always on my mind making the correct use of tags and categories. The use of related posts (provided tags are correct) is a create way to link to older posts.
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Danny Dover Recommends a Pyramid style hierarchy for this in his Advanced SEO book, Usability wise I suppose a shallow 2 or 3 tier hierarchy is probably optimal
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Twitter: SmallWebBiz
Yes that’s the general consensus, silo the structure but don’t make them too deep!
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Twitter: seojus1
Hi Mike,
Awesome post. Completely agree, it is a balance of on and off page optimization. Some people like you say, just spam links all day long, and while that might work quickly, it is certainly not long term.
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