What do you think of Theme pyramids for SEO?
-
Hi,
Just been reading up on theme pyramids, I have seen these before but found a good article on the subject going into quite some detail.
http://www.canonicalseo.com/theme-pyramids/
Using the word 'Pyramid' does scream black hat to me but looking at the structure, this must be the best way for internal linking.
Even the keyword structure looks good,
Example:
homepage - shoes
category - red shoes
sub category - size 7 red shoes
Building anchor text links for shoes, red shoes or size 7 red shoes will benefit all 3 terms.
Negative/Positive comments please.
-
I think this video would explain a lot
http://www.seomoz.org/blog/whiteboard-friday-flat-site-architecture
-
Ok, let me get this right so I don't have to ask again
Example Layout:
http://www.seoconsult.com/seoblog/wp-content/uploads/2011/05/Flat-Architecture1.jpg
If pages on level 3 only linked back to it's linking page on level 2 that would be pyramid.
If every page linked to every page then that is flat.
Usually in eCommerce websites you cant get to a individual product in one click from the homepage, you have to travel through cats and sub cats so most eCommerce sites must not be flat?
-
No flat means that evey page is linked from the home page and back to the home page, this is the optimal link stucture for pagerank. But as mentioned , you need to think of your users.
If you make every page link to every other page, then you keep thinks pretty equal, when really you want certain pages to have more pagerank then others.
Make sure you important pages are linked from your homepage if posible, then from there, i would think of what needed for your users.
Every ones content is different, and there is no hard and fast rule that fits every site.
-
Yes, every site potentially has a logical hierarchy to it (more than one, in most cases) that could make sense for both visitors and SEO. It's really the basis of all information architecture, in a sense.
In SEO, we usually refer to a "flat" architecture as an ideal where the home-page would link to every page on the site and every page would only be one step away. Of course, in practice, this can lead to unusable sites and massive dilution of internal PR. It's great for a 10-page site, but not for a 10,000-page site.
-
Thanks for your reply,
Ok Peter, so your actually saying the 'idea' of the pyramid does make logical sense.
Every website has a hierarchy and this can be produced for bots and users by introducing some kind of pyramid linking structure?
When you say 'flat architecture' I take it you mean where every page links to every page so every page looks equal?
-
Absolutely (I actually thumbed up your comments). It's good to be aware of internal PR flow, and it IS important. it's just easy to go crazy.
-
I agree, i do not suggest anyone go out to link for the sole reason of pagerank (Admittedly I did just that when I first read the algorithm), only that is should be understood and considered when linking.
It is amazing how good a linking structure you come up with when you link naturaly. in fact i have to say that a lot of good SEO occures when doing things naturaly. I think SEO today is more of what not to do rather than what to do. It is hard to beat the SE's but you can make sure you not doing yourself harm.
-
I think this is really just an extension of site/information architecture in general - to some degree, a logical structure is good for people and bots. I also think there's no "right" answer when it comes to this kind of structure vs. a "flat" architecture. As Alan said, a flat architecture isn't usually practical on big sites, but I think it goes deeper. A flat architecture implies that all the pages on your site have equal weight. That's rarely true. Driving internal link-juice to major categories and drilling down focuses the most weight on the top.
Now, you can overdo it. I think the article you site goes a little too far these days, because if you apply that to any situation, you're going to end up with a ton of thin content. Post-Panda, created 100s of deep pages just to target 3-4 word phrases could backfire. Eventually, you're going to run out of content for those pages. So, I wouldn't create a pyramid frame and then start looking for bricks. Start with your pile of bricks and see what kind of pyramid you can make out of it. Good information architecture starts with the information you have.
I also tend to lean toward hybrid approaches. For example, you can set up a pyramid but then also link to your Top 10 Products from your home-page. That flattens your architecture for those key products and sends link-juice deep into your structure. There are a lot of useful variations on that theme.
-
no, no-follow tags use as much pagerank as any other links, it just does go anywhere, so it is wasted. You should never use no-follow on internal links, is just a waste of link juice.
No-follows produce no gain, the only use is when you link to a dodgy site, you want to tell Google, thaat you are not passing link juice to this dogy site, you do not vouch for them.
-
Thanks,
But can this not be controlled by the no follow tag?
-
If you could you would want to link to every page from your home page and link back to the home page from every page without any other linksing, but a limit on the number of pages http://thatsit.com.au/seo/reports/violation/the-page-contains-too-many-hyperlinks andthe fact that it may not be friendly to your users does not allow this, but this is the best linking stucture, have a read of this page for a clearer explaintion http://thatsit.com.au/seo/tutorials/a-simple-explanation-of-pagerank
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
It's possible a bounce-rate attack manipulate SEO?
My site has been visited by unusual users with one second session times. This leaves my analytics data confused.
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | CompraBit0 -
How do I deal with Negative SEO (Spammy Links)?
For the past 12 months, our website has been hit by spammy links with annoying anchor text. We suspected one of our competitor are deploying negative SEO on us. The image is an example of the sites and anchor text we have been spammed with. The frequency is about 1 - 2 spammy links a day. I have a few questions from here onwards: Does those links affect our SEO? (Most are mainly nofollow) Other than disavow, what other stuff can I do? How will google and other search engines see this incident? TcmFsti
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | Changsst0 -
More pages is good for SEO? Is this true?
Hi Guys I have a question, I was told the more pages I have the better for SEO, Is this true?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | edward-may0 -
PDF Sharing sites - scribd/dropbox/edocr/etc Cleaning Up SEO History
Howdy, Whilst in the process of cleaning up a new clients seo profile and have encountered a lot of techniques I am uncomfortable with and in my opinion should be removed. One technique I have not seen before is using a load of pdf sharing and video sites. The domains have high DA ratings, but to me the intention is highly questionable. The sites include: https://www.dropbox.com/s/tuxb8w1qowcm27i/Looking for boiler spares-geniune parts and consumables.pdf?dl=0 http://www.scribd.com/doc/241542076/Looking-for-Boiler-Spares-geniune-Parts-and-Consumables http://www.divshare.com/download/26207602-569 And so the list goes on for about 50 domains. Am I correct to be concerned here and what was the seo plan here? Thanks in advance. Andy Southall. (Marz Ventures)
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | MarzVentures0 -
Recovering from Black Hat/Negative SEO with a twist
Hey everyone, This is a first for me, I'm wondering if anyone has experienced a similar situation and if so, what the best course of action was for you. Scenario In the process of designing a new site for a client, we discovered that his previous site, although having decent page rank and traffic had been hacked. The site was built on Wordpress so it's likely there was a vulnerability somewhere that allowed someone to create loads of dynamic pages; www.domain.com/?id=102, ?id=103, ?id=104 and so on. These dynamic pages ended up being malware with a trojan horse our servers recognized and subsequently blocked access to. We have since helped them remedy the vulnerability and remove the malware that was creating these crappy dynamic pages. Another automated program appears to have been recently blasting spam links (mostly comment spam and directory links) to these dynamically created pages at an incredibly rapid rate, and is still actively doing so. Right now we're looking at a small business website with a touch over 500k low-quality spammy links pointing to malware pages from the previously compromised site. Important: As of right now, there's been no manual penalty on the site, nor has a "This Site May Have Been Compromised" marker in the organic search results for the site. We were able to discover this before things got too bad for them. Next Steps? The concern is that when the Penguin refresh occurs, Google is going to notice all these garbage links pointing to those malware pages and then potentially slap a penalty on the site. The main questions I have are: Should we report this proactively to the web spam team using the guidelines here? (https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/spamreport?hl=en&pli=1) Should we request a malware review as recommended within the same guidelines, keeping in mind the site hasn't been given a 'hacked' snippet in the search results? (https://support.google.com/webmasters/topic/4598410?hl=en&ref_topic=4596795) Is submitting a massive disavow links file right now, including the 490k-something domains, the only way we can escape the wrath of Google when these links are discovered? Is it too hopeful to imagine their algorithm will detect the negative-SEO nature of these links and not give them any credit? Would love some input or examples from anyone who can help, thanks in advance!
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | Etna0 -
href="#" and href="javascript.void()" links. Is there a difference SEO wise?
I am currently working a site re-design and we are looking at if href="#" and href="javascript.void()" have an impact on the site? We were initially looking at getting the links per page down but I am thinking that rel=nofollow is the best method for this. Anyone had any experience with this? Thanks in advanced
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | clickermediainc0 -
SEO problems with PR Newswires
Just been investigating PR newswires for the first time (despite having worked in PR for over a decade!) One of my clients has asked my to send out a news release via a newswire of my choice. I will not be posting the news release on my client's website, to avoid the most obvious duplication issue. Has anyone had SEO probs from newswires though? I just saw one which offered: "Minimum guaranteed number of media websites on which your release is posted" alarm bells!
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | McTaggart0 -
Got an SEO package, paid $400+ for it, basically got scammed.
Hi guys, I know this is stupid but I bought an SEO package for around $400. Received the report, and my... it was a complete load of spam. It was basically a blast to lots of sites with random articles and my anchor texts all over the place. Theres thousands of these links and the articles dont make sense, I'm not sure what i'm going to do! This is my main Ecommerce website and i'm worried, i've complained and I hope to get a refund however i'm worried hes going to just blast my site and get me penalized by Google. It is clearly blackhat. Is there anything I can do? I'm very worried. Thanks
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | Superinks0