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!
-
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.
-
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
-
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
-
OnPage SEO
I am about to start my website http://i-love-skiing.com/. I would like to know what OnPage ranking factors should I consider while launching or building my website. I want to rank higher on search results.
On-Page Optimization | | TheresaWoods0 -
Is this blog running on the Genesis Framework?
Hi all, WordPress isn't my area of specialty in terms of themes and identifying what a blog might currently be using. Here's the link: http://www.pens.com/blog I've had one developer tell me this blog is on the Genesis framework and another one told me it is not. Can someone weigh in here and also give me some tips on how to know one way or the other? If it is not on the Genesis Framework, can you provide any helpful links/tutorials on how to get this blog onto the Genesis Framework? We want to be able to use Yoast SEO and apparently our current theme will not allow us to do so. Thanks in advance! Dana
On-Page Optimization | | danatanseo0 -
Blog issue broken link
Taking Great Photographs Underwater May 25, 2015 By sdwellers@aol.com No comments yet florida keys, key largo diving Excuse my ignorance, I suspect this is an easy issue...but at the the top of each of my blog posts have what you see above....the "No Comments yet" tab is showing as a broken link 404 error...?Why? And how to fix?Thank you
On-Page Optimization | | sdwellers0 -
WP SEO plugin
When working with WP sites I generally use Michael Torbert's All in One SEO Pack. I've encountered a few examples where when the homepage shows up on a Google search results page the title/title tag shows up as {Business Name:} | {Keyword/Description}. In the 'General Settings' of the plugin in the 'Home Title' field, I have it listed as {Keyword/Description} | {Business Name} I'm not sure why the order is getting switched and where the ':' comes from. I'm not sure if this even has any adverse effect. If anyone has had experience with this, your input would be appreciated. Note - I'm not seeing this issue reflected on Bing.
On-Page Optimization | | stevefidelity0 -
2 Question about URL structure
Hello guys 1 - I have a question about the best structure for URLs from the point of view of SEO: Is it OK to use the URL as mywebsite.com.br/long-tail-article Or is better this mywebsite.com.br/category/long-tail-article 2 - When part of my keyword is already in my "category", for example: mywebsite.com.br/digital-marketing/digital-marketing-is-good I leave it as it is, or in the following way: mywebsite.com.br/digital-marketing-is-good NOTE: Do not take into account that this URL would be different from other URLs in this category
On-Page Optimization | | seomasterbrasil0 -
Are lots of wordpress tags hurting my SEO?
When I started my blog 4 years ago and didn't know what I was doing, I set it up to be organized using tags (no categories). I have around 20 tags and around 250 articles. Each blog article typically has 2-4 tags associated with it. There is a lot of topic overlap and putting each post in only one category wouldn't work. I have been no indexing, do follow my tag pages because they are just a list of post titles, but I'm wondering if the whole situation is hurting my SEO. On my homepage I have a sidebar menu/list of all the tags so I have link juice going to no indexed (but dofollow) pages. Reducing the number of tags would be bad for user experience because people who were looking for info on a specific topic wouldn't be as easily able to find what they want. Ideas?
On-Page Optimization | | KateV0 -
Does my actual blog post title have any effect once I create a title tag for SEO purposes?
A little confused about this. Reason I ask is that using my actual title for my title tag sometimes isn't the best for getting ranked, so the title and title tag are sometimes not the same.
On-Page Optimization | | seo_f20120 -
Home Page Optimization For Wordpress Blog
Hi, I'm developing a wordpress site and currently confused over home page optimization. I'm planning to use excerpts of posts on home page so that users can glance over all recent posts and at same time avoid content duplication. But I'm not sure how to optimize the home page for couple of targeted keywords . How can i make sure that there is enough content, proper H1, title tag etc on home page for target keywords even by using excerpts of different posts on home page with Read more links to complete posts? Should i use some sticky post on home page to take care of all onpage requirements for required keywords or there are some other better ways to do it? Regards, shaz
On-Page Optimization | | shaz_lhr0