Moz Q&A is closed.
After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.
Best SEO structure for blog
-
What is the best SEO page/link structure for a blog with, say 100 posts that grows at a rate of 4 per month? Each post is 500+ words with charts/graphics; they're not simple one paragraph postings.
Rather than use a CMS I have a hand crafted HTML/CSS blog (for tighter integration with the parent site, some dynamic data effects, and in general to have total control). I have a sidebar with headlines from all prior posts, and my blog home page is a 1 line summary of each article.
I feel that after 100 articles the sidebar and home page have too many links on them. What is the optimal way to split them up? They are all covering the same niche topic that my site is about.
I thought of making the side bar and home page only have the most recent 25 postings, and then create an archive directory for older posts. But categorizing by time doesn't really help someone looking for a specific topic.
I could tag each entry with 2-3 keywords and then make the sidebar a sorted list of tags. Clicking on a tag would then show an intermediate index of all articles that have that tag, and then you could click on an article title to read the whole article.
Or is there some other strategy that is optimal for SEO and the indexing robots? Is it bad to have a blog that is too heirarchical (where articles are 3 levels down from the root domain) or too flat (if there are 100s of entries)?
Thanks for any thoughts or pointers.
-
Mike, what type of structure did you end up using for your blog? Do you have any interesting insights to share, either with us here or in a YOUmoz post? Would love to hear them!
- topic:timeago_earlier,2 months
-
I'll second just about everything that Frank said.
Use an XML sitemap and pinging services. I haven't tested it formally, but my Wordpress and Drupal sites that incorporate this get indexed instantly and completely, while some other sites seem to lag.
Consider featuring your best or most important posts. Lists of popular posts are easily automated, but are they really your best or most important, or about your most important keywords? Some posts make a big splash then fade away, while others may grow in popularity over time. By putting direct links to this content on the home page, it'll continue to get traffic, social media shares, and links, and continue to build rank. (Besides being in front of users, more rank will flow into it from the home page.) Every month, re-evaluate which pages should have direct links.
- topic:timeago_earlier,13 days
-
Rather than trying to imagine what a good strategy is in this situation, why not look at someone in a similar situation. Unless I am misunderstanding your site structure, it sounds like you at least have a home page and a blog - much like SEOmoz. Let's take a look at how SEOmoz handles this situation.
All Pages
- Persistent site search allowing users to find any SEOmoz content at any point in time during a visit
Home Page
- Clearly calls out latest posts to SEO Blog and YOUmoz Blog
SEO Blog & YOUmoz Blog Home Pages
- Shows latest posts and lets user view by 5, 10, 15, 25, or 50 posts
- View most popular posts
- View posts by author
- View posts by category
- Pagination at bottom of page lets visitors move easily to older blog posts
Post Pages
- View most popular posts
- View posts by author
- View posts by category
- View related Q&A
- topic:timeago_earlier,7 days
-
Well the problems you're trying to overcome are the exact reasons why a good CMS blog system pulling and storing posts from a databse is extremely effective.
Doing things your way, all static HTML/CSS with no databse, it would definitely make sense to only list the most recent posts on any given page/chategory, and then come up with an archive system for the rest.
You should have a search feature you can put on your site so as to let people easily pull up older buried posts. I don't personally have any experience with it, but you could try Google's Custom Search Engine to see if it could accomplish what you need.
As far as the hierarchy of the domain levels goes I would never go deeper than 4 levels with your categories/posts. You can almost never have too flat of a hierarchy... example being looking at SEOMoz's structure. They are a massive blog with a large number of posts, and yet almost all of the posts trace to a URL structure of seomoz.org/blog/post-name. So in theory that would create a very broad and flat structure, yet they don't seem to have much if any indexing issues.
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
-
Unsolved I have lost SEO Ranking while removing www from domain
I have lost search SEO ranking for 4-6 core keywords while removing www from domain switch.
On-Page Optimization | Jan 20, 2024, 1:18 PM | velomate
Referring domain: https://cashforscrapcarsydney.com.au/ Earlier the domain was in the format: https://www.cashforscrapcarsydney.com.au/ But when I checked the search result, search engines had not yet crawled to the new format. Let me know if the server change or any algorithm hit might cause it. Also please share the feedback on - does removing www from the domain losses keyword ranking. Helpful replies are needed.0 -
1500 words per post * 10 posts vs 15000 words in one article, which is best for SEO?
If you don't have any problems with Text/HTML ratio. Which one do you prefer for better results? With reasons of possible, thanks.
On-Page Optimization | Apr 3, 2015, 5:40 PM | Eslam-yosef0 -
Duplicate Content - Blog Rewriting
I have a client who has requested a rewrite of 250 blog articles for his IT company. The blogs are dispersed on a variety of platforms: his own website's blog, a business innovation website, and an IT website. He wants to have each article optimised with keyword phrases and then posted onto his new website thrice weekly. All of this is in an effort to attract some potential customers to his new site and also to establish his company as a leader in its field. To what extent would I need to rewrite each article so as to avoid duplicating the content? Would there even be an issue if I did not rewrite the articles and merely optimised them with keywords? Would the articles need to be completely taken by all current publishers? Any advice would be greatly appreciated.
On-Page Optimization | Sep 3, 2014, 11:07 PM | StoryScout0 -
Url structure with dash or slash
Hi There We have a content website. We don't rank well category image related searches but we get quite good traffic for those keywords. Those keywords are mostly like "category images". We want to change our url structure and we have 2 options now. 1- domain.com/category/category-images 2-domain.com/category/images option 1 repeats the category name so it looks spammy option 2 doesn't really have the keyword. any ideas which one tho choose? Thanks! ps: we don't want to use domain.com/category-images (too many root link)
On-Page Optimization | Feb 10, 2014, 3:54 PM | muminaydin0 -
Do Parent Categories Hurt SEO?
I have parent categories and subcategories. Will it be harder for the subcategories to rank well because they have a parent category? The URL is longer, for one. I am just wondering if I should not have parent categories. I have one category page doing really well and I am trying to boost the others (most of which are subcategories) and this is a concern for me. Thanks! Edit: I also have a category that has 2 parent categories. I want it automatically in those 2 categories and one of its own. By itself it is very important keyword. Is this ok or should I have it be a parent category?
On-Page Optimization | Jun 27, 2013, 2:31 PM | 2bloggers0 -
Bullet points good or bad for seo?
Hi Everyone, After a body of unique content of say 50 words, will Google then penalise you for adding bullet points which will then be duplicated across all those products (say 100 products)? http://www.polesandblinds.com/acacia-teal-roller-blind/? Look forward to your comments, good or bad, Thanks Jonathan
On-Page Optimization | May 14, 2013, 12:26 PM | JonnytheB0 -
Best Way to Use Date in Title
Hi, I do most of the current copy for our blog which you can find here http://appointedd.com/blog/ I believe having a regular blog structure with a mix of irregular ad hoc posts to go in around these. So, for this blog, I write an article on "Beauty Industry News" every week. Now, I don't want to use the same title for each post, so I've peen butting in the date after each one i.e. "Beauty Industry News - 24/04/13". Is this best practice or is there a better way of naming regular posts? Thanks in advance!
On-Page Optimization | Apr 24, 2013, 10:46 AM | LeahHutcheon0 -
German SEO
Just a quickie, Does anybody know of any strong German SEO agencies? Many Thanks Sean
On-Page Optimization | Jul 12, 2011, 5:49 PM | Yozzer0