Help needed for a 53 Page Internal Website Structure & Internal Linking
-
Hey all...
I'm designing the structure for a website that has 53 pages. Can you take a look at the attached diagram and see if the website structure is ok?
On the attached diagram I have numbered the pages from 1 to 53, with 1 being the most important home page - 2,3,4,5, being the next 4 important pages - 6,7,8... 15,16,17 being the 3rd set of important pages, and 18,19,20..... 51,52,53 being the last set of pages which are the easiest to rank.
I have two questions:
- Is the website structure for this correct? I have made sure that all pages on the website are reachable.
- Considering the home page, and page number 2,3,4,5 are the most important pages - I am linking out to these pages from the the last set of pages (18,29,20...51,52,53). There are 36 pages in the last set - and out of this 36, from 24 of them I am linking back to home page and page number 2,3,4,5. The remaining 8 pages of the 36 will link back to pages 6,7,8...15,16,17.
In total the most importnat page will have the following number of internal incoming links:
Home Page : 25
Pages 2,3,4,5 : 25
Pages 6,7,8...15,16,17 : 4
Pages 18,19,20...51,52,53 : 1
Is this ok considering home page, and pages 2,3,4,5 are the most important? Or do you think I should divide and give more internal links to the other pages also?
If you can share any inputs or suggestions to how I can improve this it will greatly help me. Also if you know any references for good guides to internal linking of websites greater that 50 pages please share them in the answers.
Thank you all!
Regards,
P.S - The URL for the image is at http://imgur.com/XqaK4
-
Flat site architecture shows that any directory one step from the root shows extreme importance; so essentially you can link to any inner page in any other directories.
For example: USA
Jacksonville Atlanta Mississippi New York Los Angeles Ohio Las Vegas
As you can see in this model, this is natural. But it shows the flat site architecture I was referring to. Any of the cities show great value to the home page. You want to include any unique data in these directories. Essentially any file can be made important, so you don't have to worry about specific keywords you want to rank for not have an equal opportunity. You don't have to worry about one folder on your server having more importance over another.
You can Google "flat architecture"
http://www.seomoz.org/ugc/a-flat-architecture-in-practice
http://www.seomoz.org/blog/whiteboard-friday-flat-site-architecture
You can certainly should focus on your content algorithm and start planning your linking building profile.
-
Thanks Chad... Good tip regarding passing up link juice by creating valuable stuff in the deep pages. Shall follow that.. You've answered my question, but I have one more doubt regarding natural inner pages. Is it better to have a natural flow .. As in. Home page - country specific pages - city specific pages - shops in the cities Or Home page - important country & city pages & shops - less important country & city pages - shops. If I use the first option, which is more natural I can clearly show the path to each page. If I use the second option, it's not natural- but the important pages are closer to the home page. Another option is to have the natural flow but to also link out to important pages where appropriate from top level pages. I know this is a little vague, but I hope you've got my doubt.., would love to hear your thoughts on this .. Thanks.
-
I took a look at your screenshot; but a few things first.
Proper silo-site is an ongoing process. The most important thing is to ensure that you have natural inner pages and link them to each top-level-directory (one directory away from the root). You can certainly tie your pages in each inner directory by linking from the main inner directory.
As you syndicate your unique pages in unique directories (again one directory from the root) you can pass great link juice throughout your website's skeleton, leading to better home page rank.
Whitehat SEO includes a very deep inter-linking structure. To get a feel for this checkout Wikipedia. They are the best at placing links to relevant or similar content above the fold and naturally linked to other directories within their framework.
To answers your question direct:
Inner link as much as you can to other files and from top-level-directories to files within it's directory. Only when it is natural include an anchor to other files for further reading.
The deeper a page can link to a higher level directory the better.
*For off-site SEO, getting links to the deep pages is going to be key to help pass up the link juice. Try sampling your content on different websites and getting a link back to page in the process. You can create pdf, info-graphics, or technical content with these deep pages and it will do wonders for your website.
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
-
Page must be internally linked to get indexed?
If a there is page like website.com/page; I think this page will be indexed by Google even we don't link it internally from anywhere. Is this true? Will it makes any difference in-terms of "indexability" if we list this page on sitemap? I know page's visibility will increase when link from multiple internal pages. I wonder will there be any noticeable difference while this page is listed in sitemap.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | vtmoz0 -
Preserving link equity from old pages
Hi Moz Community, We have a lot of old pages built with Dreamweaver a long time ago (2003-2010) which sit outside our current content management system. As you'd expect they are causing a lot of trouble with SEO (Non-responsive, duplicate titles and various other issues). However, some of these older pages have very good backlinks. We were wondering what is the best way to get rid of the old pages without losing link equity? In an ideal world we would want to bring over all these old pages to our CMS, but this isn't possible due to the amount of pages (~20,000 pages) and cost involved. One option is obviously to bulk 301 redirect all these old pages to our homepage, but from what we understand that may not lead to the link equity being passed down optimally by Google (or none being passed at all). Another option we can think of would be to bring over the old articles with the highest value links onto the current CMS and 301 redirect the rest to the homepage. Any advice/thoughts will be greatly appreciated. Thumbs up! Thanks,
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | 3gcouk0 -
Website Redesign, 301 Redirects, and Link Juice
I want to change my client’s ecommerce site to Shopify. The only problem is that Shopify doesn’t let you customize domains. I plan to: keep each page’s content exactly the same keep the same domain name 301 redirect all of the pages to their new url The ONLY thing that will change is each page’s url. Again, each page will have the exact same content. The only source of traffic to this site is via Google organic search and sales depend on the traffic. There are about 10 pages that have excellent link juice, 20 pages that have medium link juice, and the rest is small link juice. Many of our links that have significant link juice are on message boards written by people that like our product. I plan to change these urls and 301 redirect them to their new urls. I’ve read tons of pages online about this topic. Some people that say it won’t effect link juice at all, some say it will might effect link juice temporarily, and others are uncertain. Most answers tend to be “You should be good. You might lose some traffic temporarily. You might want to switch some of your urls to the new structure to see how it affects it first.” Here’s my question: 1) Has anyone ever done changed a url structure for an existing website with link juice? What were your results and do you have a definitive answer on the topic? 2) How much link juice (if any) will be lost if I keep all of the exact content the same but only change each page’s url? 3) If link juice is temporarily lost and then regained, how long will it be temporarily lost? 1 week? 1 month? 6 months? Thanks.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | kirbyf0 -
Looking for help with my website
Hi does any one know of a good seo company that will get results, i.e., fix site issues and get the site improving in the serps.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Taiger0 -
Changing Structure of Links... Yay or Nay?
Hello there,
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | NikitaG
My site: MigrationLawyers.co.za was made with no sub structure.
It has no categories, and no child pages, all the pages are simply added to the end of the URL.
Sometimes this results in a rather lengthy URL like:
**/Immigration-Permanent-Residence-Work-Permit-South-**Africa
I was hoping to arrange the pages a bit into a logical, parented structure that looks more like:
**/Immigration/Permanent-Residence/Work-Permit-South-**Africa I would have parented pages, making up the same pretty much URL Now the Questions:
Is it worth it?
Will google read my parented URL with all the keywords, or only the page's keywords?
What should I expect to see from google?
Will my SERPs be all messed up? I will, without doubt, 301 redirect all the old URLs to the new parented ones. Any advice would be great,
Thanks,
Nikita0 -
Home Page Link Juice Dilution
I have worked to build out a keyword targeted library of over 700 Guides of approx. 800 word each. They are specifically targeted at actionable verticals and contain 3x strategically placed CTAs in each article. So far, I have only managed to get a low level of uniques per day to this section of the website. This website's external backlinks are largely pointed at the home page. Furthermore, the home page has a footer link to 10,000 SEO crawl-able user generated profiles. These profiles have little potential for conversion and offer little value. Given the above information, I was hoping that someone could help me with the following questions: Is it possible that home page link juice is becoming diluted as result 10,000 user profiles being live on the site? If so, can a "no follow" on the home page footer link to the user profiles prevent the juice from transferring? Overall, I would like to redirect this PR5 domain's link juice to these guides where they will have a much higher conversion rate.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | TQContent0 -
Redirect Help - Domain Change and Website Redesign
Hi there, I've redesigned a website for a client, but we are also changing domains and I'm trying to figure out the best way to set up the redirects from their old domain to the new one. 95% of their search engine traffic originally came through brand related keywords that landed on their homepage, and most of the remaining 15% landed on 3 other pages. The new site has pages to replace these 3 main SEO pages, and I'm about to set 301 redirects from their old domain, but I can't figure out the quickest/best way to do it. Is it possible to set up a specific redirect for the 4 main pages (Home + plus the 3 others) then a "catch all" type of thing for the rest of the pages, that redirect either to the homepage, or some sort of "Check out our new Site" landing page. How do you do this, or is there a better way to set it up? Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | timscullin0 -
Can I reduce number of on page links by just adding "no follow" tags to duplicate links
Our site works on templates and we essentially have a link pointing to the same place 3 times on most pages. The links are images not text. We are over 100 links on our on page attributes, and ranking fairly well for key SERPS our core pages are optimized for. I am thinking I should engage in some on-page link juice sculpting and add some "no follow" tags to 2 of the 3 repeated links. Although that being said the Moz's on page optimizer is not saying I have link cannibalization. Any thoughts guys? Hope this scenario makes sense.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | robertrRSwalters0