Organizing Site Content

Theming

The most optimal way to organize a website is to separate it into “themes.” For example, a car dealer might organize their site into “car sales,” “car repair,” and “car accessories.” For each theme they would have sub-pages corresponding to that theme, and under each sub-page they could have another set of sub-pages. It just depends on how much content you have, need, or want, and if this organizational structure makes logical sense. We recommend keeping
an entire site accessible through a sitemap, as well as keeping the site no deeper than 3 levels.

Menu

A site’s menu structure should be simple and not use anything too fancy like Flash. If your site menu currently uses images as buttons, we suggest changing those graphics to text links, as search engines can’t index text included within an image. Internal menu links, if they are text-based, can actually help give a search engine context in determining keyword relevance and rankings, so it is worth the effort.

Above the fold

“Above the fold” refers to the content of a website that is visible on an average sized screen, without scrolling down to see more. The content at the top of the page is thought to have more influence in your search engine rankings than content located “below the fold.” So you must be sure to place your content higher up on each relevant page. This also means you will want to make sure your content is well written and helpful for visitors right from the very beginning.

Internal link structure

In addition to using a themed structure, it’s important to consider the linking done inside your website. Instead of using text like “click here” or “learn more” for links, you should use descriptive text when linking to another page on your site. Sub-pages should link back to top-level pages with the keyword in the link

text. In addition to links in the menu, you should be sure to include relevant links within your content which point to other target pages on your site. A good way to check for this is to use the “site:” query in Google and search for pages on your site that use a given keyword. For example, you might type into

Google “site:yourwebsite.com digital slr cameras” to see a list of all pages where the keyword “digital slr cameras” is used on your site. The results from this query provide conclusive evidence of just how well Google knows what content and keywords are on our sites. It’s truly amazing.

TIP FOR YOU: Creating fresh content is well worth all the time and effort. It is a fabulous investment that will reward site owners time and time again with search engine traffic. Content should be optimized for both users and search engines, as both will see and use the content. By optimizing content, search engines will be able to rank your site higher and for more keywords. In SEO we like to say “content is king,” and if content is done properly, you will definitely understand why as your rankings continue to improve.