Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Blog

Categories

Most sites do not usually have more than about a half dozen major categories. Just how I gave the example of a theme pyramid earlier, your site should be broken down from the broadest topic on the home page to covering more niche topics as you work your way through the site.

You can break the site structure down into categories related by:

• product or service type;
• problems you solve;
• and the types of people who have the problems you help solve.

Search algorithms rely heavily on internal linking structures to determine the importance of documents on your site. The pages which you link to most frequently are the pages you are telling search engines are your most important pages.

On your home page you may want to strongly feature your categories in a manner that helps prospects self-select their path through your site.

Each category and sub category should have local navigation which helps support its structure.

If you have areas where one category or choice could offend others in that same basket (think gay dating and an option for a group of people who traditionally irrationally hate gay people, for instance) then you should not show the options that might offend one group to the other.

If you are trying to get your brand known, you may also want to consider creating multiple brands if the friction between consumer sets is too great. It is impossible for one site to appeal to everyone.

Although it is beyond the scope of knowledge necessary for most SEOs or webmasters, BlockRank is a well-cited research paper discussing internal linkage patterns for more efficient PageRank computation (if you are interested in algorithmic research).

Anchor Text

When linking between your documents, you should use the words you want to rank well for in the anchor text.

<a href="page.htm">Anchor text</a>

If you cannot use descriptive anchor text, some search engines may still place some weighting on link titles (although not as much as anchor text).

<a href="blah.htm" title="descriptive text">Click here</a>

You also can make up for slightly under-descriptive site navigation links by providing descriptive footer text link navigation.

A large criteria in search engine rankings is the text used to link to a document. Sometimes it is hard to control how others link to you, but you can always do a good job of providing great links to yourself using internal site linking.

Use Descriptive Anchor Text
When possible, you want to refer to your documents using words similar to those expressed in the title. Let's say I have a page about 5 HTP that is linking to a page about the history of 5 HTP. I would not use the word history to create the link. I would use the phrase 5 HTP history or history of 5 HTP in the link as it would help the relevancy of both pages.

Click Here

Sometimes it is necessary to use a "click here? link, but most times you can get around it. You cannot always write a link that helps the relevancy of the page that it's on, but almost always you can write a good descriptive link that contains a keyword or keyword phrase which will help the page the link is pointing at.

Having a few click here links scattered throughout your site may make your linkage profile look more natural, but most of your links should describe what is on the other end of the link.

Images as Links

I believe it is usually better to use text as links than images, but if you use an image ensure you place a descriptive image alt tag on it.

<img src="http://www.site.com/blah.jpg" alt="5 HTP History.">

If you use image navigation links, it is advisable to place descriptive text links at the bottom of the page to help search engines figure out the relevancy of your pages.

Spamming Alt Tags

Image links are likely not weighted as heavily as text links because they are more susceptible to spam. For example:

<img src="htp.jpg" alt="5HTP 5-HTP 5 Hydroxytryptophan 5hydroxytryptophan 5 HYDROXYTRYPTOPHAN">

Using an alt tag incorrectly as done above can hurt more than help. The search engines are generally rather liberal, but it also does not look appealing to the eye to see that long string on when someone rolls over the image. What's even worse is some browsers will read that random string to the computer user and your site will confuse the hell out of 'em.

Yahoo! actively edits their search results. Google employs remote quality raters. If either of them see signs of artificial ranking manipulation, they may remove your site from their index. Some competitors can turn you in and get you de-listed as well.

Linking to Page Anchors

On longer pages you can use text to link within the same document. Frequently, FAQ pages have links at the top of the page which link to the answers of the associated questions. These links look like this:

<a href="#anchor1">FAQ Anchor Text</a>

You then place the anchor you are linking to somewhere else on that same page.

<a name="anchor1"></a>

Broken Links in Your Site

Many directory editors and site visitors will quickly grow disinterested with your site if it is full of broken links. Some directory editors will run a link checker on your site in the background while they review the content. The Internet is dynamic and ever-changing and some of your links may break from month to month. I recommend checking your site for broken links before submitting it to any of the major directories. Xenu Link Sleuth is a free downloadable link-checking program
which alerts you to broken links and can even help you quickly build a site map. I try to look through my site for broken links at least once every few months.

When Broken Links are OK
A good thing about the blog format of this site is that I do not need to go back and fix broken links as they fall into the archives. If your site is a clearly dated news site then you do not need to go back to edit all of your links as sites around the web change.

Broken Links as a Signal of Low Quality
If most of the links on your site are broken or link to spammy sites, then search engines may place less authority on your documents full of broken links. If most of the links are broken then how well can they trust the current page content? A document that links to bad neighborhoods or non existing pages probably offers outdated advice.

Dangling Nodes

Most, if not all, of your pages should be linked to from other pages and link to other pages on your site. If a page does not link to other pages it prevents search engine spiders from being able to use that page's link authority to help get other pages indexed.

Relative versus Absolute Links

Some people link internally using relative links like this:

<a href="../">Anchor Text</a>

Others link using absolute links like this:

<a href="http://www.site/page.htm">Anchor Text</a>

Search engines convert relative links to their absolute locations prior to assigning the page a document ID number. It is preferable to use absolute URLs, but search engines should not mess up assigning a proper URL to documents linked to via relative links.

The big downsides to using relative links are the following:

• Content Theft: If people steal your content and repost it to their sites, it may be worth using absolute links so you get some link credit/value out of them stealing your content. 120
• Hijacking: If someone tries to hijack your site (make a search engine think your site exists at their URL), they can get many pages on your site if all your URLs are relative. If you use absolute links they cannot get many pages from your site.
• Canonical URL issues: If a search engine indexes your site from both the www version and non www version that can cause duplicate content issues.

Canonical URLs

Search engines may index your web site or web pages under multiple URLs if your site or internal linkage data is not structured properly. Here are some tips to keep this from happening:

• WWW versus Non-WWW: Make sure you use absolute links and point them at a consistent version of the site. If your site is being indexed under the www version and the non-www version, 301 redirect the less important version of the site at the other location.
• Page versus Other Sites: Try not to use too much content that appears on other indexed sites. If your site is new, by default you will have less authority than most other sites with the same content, thus you will not rank for it due to duplicate content filters.
• Site versus Page: When you link back to your home page make sure you are linking to www.site.com and not something like site.com/index.html. This will ensure your internal and external link authority focus on one URL. If you split up your link popularity, you are splitting your votes.
• Dynamic CMS Errors: Some content management systems get the same content or near duplicate content indexed at multiple URLs. There are many ways to look out for this, and I could write 30 pages on the topic, but make sure that as you surf through your site you do not have printer friendly versions or other similar versions of your content getting indexed. Also, make sure that you are not adding arbitrary unnecessary variables to your URLs and that you cannot access the same page at multiple URL addresses.
• Error Codes: Make sure that when you go to a URL that does not exist on your site that it sends a 404 error code. If you use any internal redirects, use 301s instead of 302s if you want the pages to get indexed.

Links Within Your Content

Don't rely exclusively on your site navigation to drive your internal linkage data. People will be far more inclined to follow links in the content area of your site, thus using one article to drive the linkage data for other articles allows you to help control the visitor path through your site. It also allows you to mix up the anchor text you are using to describe the pages on your site.

Three big reasons links in content are important:

• Self Selection: Users get to select which path they are interested in, which allows you to split your content up and quickly guide them to here they want to go.
• Active Engagement: When people click links they are going from readers of your site to people actively engaged in the content.
• Sense of Control: When we click a link we feel we are in control of where we are going"¦that we made the choice to go to the next location. Navigation and ads can feel like ads.

You may also want to create a new section which is used to point links at pages that are new on your web site. Many blogs or news sites, for example, feature their newest content on their homepage.

Linking Out to Quality Sites

Many people are afraid to link out to related resources throughout their copy. Many search engines grade pages not only based upon their copy and inbound links, but also upon the pages that they link to. All of your outbound links should not be link trades in one corner of your site. Try to naturally mix to quality sites in your site architecture wherever it makes sense.

A few years ago, in a forum thread, Google's Matt Cutts said:

Of course, folks never know when we're going to adjust our scoring. It's pretty easy to spot domains that are hoarding PageRank; that can be just another factor in scoring. If you work really hard to boost your authoritylike score while trying to minimize your hub-like score, that sets your site apart from most domains. Just something to bear in mind.

And Chartreuse made a post about why Paris Hilton became so popular

Though she hired a publisist to get her on Page 6 She never really talked about herself. She talked about other people. She would mention the designers of her clothes, the club she was going to, who made the sweater for her dog, all without any guarantee of any return. She just threw out links.

It didn't take long for designers and club owners to realize that Paris Hilton was a walking billboard. So they embraced her. She paid attention to them, so they paid attention to her.

Linking out to good sites helps you in multiple ways:

• Linking out to other related sites throughout your copy makes your site look like a more natural part of the web. It will give you a ranking boost in clustering search engines (such as Ask.com). Other major 122 search engines are also believed to factor outbound links into their
  ranking algorithms.
• Linking out to related quality sites or pages offers your users additional useful information. If you refer them to good information, they will be more inclined to associate you with that good information and many of them will remember where they came from.
• I am the most relevant thing in my own life. Your site visitors and people you link to will be more inclined to link to your site if you provide a wealth of good information and also link out to additional relevant information.
• By linking out to other relevant sites, it does not force you to have to recreate the entire Web to have a useful web site.
• The people who you link to may end up returning the favor down the road. This is especially true with social sites like weblogs.

Some example sites that are easy to link to are the following:

• Wikipedia article about your topic
• Useful .edu or .gov pages about your topic
• DMOZ or Yahoo! category about your topic
• Some of the better informational or non-competitive sites ranking in the search results for your keywords or related phrases
• Sites that are authorities on your topic or a topic slightly broader
• Controversial content in your field or related fields.

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