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Search Engine Optimisation Training Course
Lesson No.5 -
Mapping Your Site Structure
by Bruce Gow Search Engine Guy Pty Ltd
http://www.searchengine-guy.com.au
This is where you make your site Search Engine
Optimisation (SEO) friendly.
Before we go anywhere else in this course, I want to remind you that all the
lessons we just went through in part 1 (Keywords Mastery), and all the lessons
we are going to review together in this part 2 (site structure mastery)
represent all the homework you are supposed to do BEFORE you go and see your web
designer, and not after!
Today, we are going to take all the keywords we have selected, evaluated,
grouped and analysed, and organized them to start mapping our site structure and
optimization strategy.
3 Tiers Structure
Search engines spiders on your site are like a man in a shopping mall.
As long as you have a main alley, shops on the left,
shops on the right it’s cool to go around that, but if I have to start to go
through one small door, and another one, and another one, I quickly become
confused of what is where, and more importantly, I lose interest in finding out.
The same concept applies with search engines spiders, if
your navigation is too complex or too deep, the crawler loses interest to visit
or index your pages.
Keep it clear and keep it simple, it works both with the
search engines and your human visitors too!
That said, the site structure we are interested in is
the one called the 3 Tiers Structure.
In this type of structure, no page in your site is further than 2 clicks away.
Here’s the summary of such site structure:
• Tier 1: Index page
• Tier 2: Category pages
• Tier 3: Content/Products pages
Mapping Your Site
From this point on, use whatever tool is convenient to you, be it imaging
software, mind mapping software, pen and paper, iPhone, etc…
Tier 1: Index Page
The first tier of your site should be your index page, or homepage.
Remember the keywords you grouped as your niche
keywords, the ones with volume over 100,000? These are the ones you want to put
in that box.
Now, I also need a dominant term for my homepage that will allows me to optimize
simultaneously for as many of my keywords as possible.
In my case, I have 2 keywords “Pest Control” and “Pest
Control Sydney”; obviously there’s no need (and it’s not recommended either) to
use “Pest Control” twice as it’s already part of “Pest Control Sydney”.
By choosing Pest Control Sydney as my main keyword, what I accomplish here is:
• Optimizing for Pest Control Sydney
• Optimizing for Pest Control
• Optimizing for Termite Control
• Optimizing for Termite Inspection
• Optimizing for Termites
• Optimizing for Pests
• Optimizing for Inspection
I’m doing all of this at the same, staying true to my niche “Pest Control”, yet
optimizing for a term that is much less competitive.
So here’s my Tier 1:
• “Pest Control Sydney” will probably be my page title.
• “Pest Control” and "Pest Control Sydney” may be my H2 tags on-page.
Tier 2: Category Pages
Much less thinking here since we already have established our categories
previously; however we want to make sure that they all are linked from the
homepage of your site:
For categories like “Pest Control Inspection” and “pest inspection” we’ll apply
the same blending technique as for the Tier 1 keywords, ideally making sure that
those categories pages are linked to using the different variations of keywords
to cover them all from different locations on your site.
Tier 3: Content Pages
This is where you list and link all your content keywords
Just follow the same procedure you have been using for Tier 1 and Tier 2
Special Note for eCommerce sites
There’s another Keyword element you must be very wary about for your product
pages, and that’s the buying/commercial intent of a keyword.
Understanding this difference is what makes a site converts like crazy, or one
with a lot of traffic not selling anything.
There’s a huge different those 2 keywords:
• Pest Control Firm
• Pest Control DYI
In this example, it’s quite easy to spot the difference, if you are selling a
service, you must optimize for the first keyword phrase, as people who search
for “Pest Control Firm” are looking for a service; while people searching for
“Pest Control DYI” are seeking for information on how to remove pest themselves!
So make sure that your content will match the intention of your visitors!
There’s a neat free tool available online to calculate for you automatically the
commercial intent of keyword: Detecting Online Commercial Intention.
URL Structure
Based on the diagram you just produced, you should be able to map your URL
structure to look like this:
/
/pest-control-sydney
/pest-inspections
/pest-reports
/…
/termite-control-sydney
/termite-control
/termite inspection
/…
/termite-treatment
/termite-treatments
/…
/pest-report
/pest-reports
/…
/pest-inspection
/pest-inspections
/…
Exercise
Today’s exercise is to use your keyword research from Part 1 to produce 2 maps
of your future site:
• One graphical map, that is visually appealing and easy to understand.
• One text map that will provide you with the recommended SEO URL structure for
your site.
At this point, even if you weren’t to complete the other lessons of this Site
Structure Mastery part, if you were to produce these information to a web design
firm, you’d already slash down the cost of your service by half at least.
Not only you’d be saving money, but you’ll also be sure to get a site structure
that does what you need it to do.
1.
Learn How to Sort Out the Competition
2. Do Your Keyword Research
Homework
3. Refining Your Keywords
4. Evaluating Ranking
Difficulty
5. Mapping Your Site
Structure
6. Understanding Links &
PageRank
7. Sculpting Your Site
Structure
8. Cascading Style Sheet
Design
9. Using Wordpress for
SEO
10. Setting up Your Analytics
11. Engineering the Title Tag
12. Optimising The Content
13. Optimising The
Description Tag
14. Building Internal
Links
15. SEO & Images
16. OnPage Analysis Using
IBP
17. Link Building 101
18. Beating Your
Competition
19. Building External
Links
20. Using Structured SEO
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