Good Internal Site Structure Idea?
-
Hello SEOMoz,
After reading a bunch of your Site Structure articles, I've decided to make ours more flat. There are numerous pages on our site which are linked to directly from our homepage, wasting mysterious amounts of Link Juice every day. I want to remove most of these links so that the Fewer, and now more heavily weighted, Homepage Links will be more powerful... but I am worried that the pages which I am knocking down to the 3rd tier level already have high rank and are distributing this Juice to other pages.
The problem is that 3 of these 9 pages are great for assisting our sales team, so I cannot take those 2 links off of the homepage...so I will be forced to Nofollow them instead. I am worried this is cutting down the number of pages on the site, also cutting out content which was previously indexed. Is this whole thing a good idea at all?
And should I just leave those 2 pages alone because I can't remove the link? I'm thinking maybe I should rel=canonical it back to the homepage? I am ultimately trying to rank the homepage for the keyword "POS Software" and this is my on-site strategy for it. Maybe adding a link from those 2 pages that say "POS Software" back to the homepage is the best bet in this scenario? I am trying to learn the absolute best thing to do instead of guessing.
Thanks!
Derek
-
OK, so, a flat architecture would suggest more links on the homepage, not less. You're trying to reduce the number of clicks from the homepage to each piece of content, not increase it.
If there's good quality content on those pages that helps your sales team, leave it up! If it helps the sales team, then removing it will probably cost you sales, right? I'd stay away from nofollowing those links, and I'd stay away from using rel="canonical", since the way you mentioned using it isn't how it should be used.
Removing 9 links from the homepage won't do all that much for you IMO. I'm looking at your homepage now. I don't think you need to worry about removing internal links. I would recommend changing the links for "QuickBooks, Peachtree, Simply Accounting, MAS 90, MAS 200, and Line 50." Either remove the links and leave the text, OR a better solution would be to link them to an internal page on the site such as /quickbooks-pos-integration.html, and target those types of keywords. But definitely don't link to quickbooks.com's homepage, they don't need that link juice and it isn't valuable to visitors.
Taking a look at the link metrics for your site, you're at homepage PA 53 and DA 43, which isn't far off from the page 1 ranking sites. I think some link building would make you much more competitive for that keyword. You're currently on page 4 when I search for "POS software", and it's an internal page that's ranking, not your homepage. Get more links to your homepage using POS Software as the anchor text, and do it in a non-spammy way. That will help quite a bit I think.
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
-
How do you implement an SEO site structure with content that falls under two silos?
We primarily produce two different types of content: concise fact sheets on topics and video briefings + transcripts of topics. Often these two content types cover the same topic area and since we're currently siloing by content type, these pages end up competing against each other for rankings. Advice on a site structure that'd avoid these issues?
On-Page Optimization | | jay_elsie1 -
Optimizing a URL/menu structure
Hi Mozzers, I'm working on Content Strategy at my job, and I'm close to making some recommendations on short/long-term direction. While I'm there, I want to tackle the URL/menu structure (correct term?), which is a bit of a mess as pages have been created without any consideration for it over time. For ease, let's just say we have 3 main subdirectories of the site (Section A-C), and let's also say that section A also has 3 important subdirectories. From a UX perspective at least, we want a page to look like: example.com/sectionA/subsectionAA/page1 but currently it's example.com/page1 We have dozens and dozens of these examples. To complicate matters a little further, Sections B and C have been earmarked to be consolidated into a new section (D), as they're currently confusing and overlapping, and create roadblocks in user journeys. So a page that is, say: example.com/sectionB/page2 may well want to be: example.com/sectionD/subsectionDA/page2 I'm comfortable enough with technically doing this, as I'm experienced enough in Drupal and have an agency on hand too, BUT - I don't know if there are any SEO pitfalls I need to be wary of when I'm doing this, beyond resubmitting sitemaps, and the trickle-down effects of redirects. Any advice, wise forum? thanks!
On-Page Optimization | | joberts0 -
Thoughts on archiving content on an event site?
I have a few sites that are used exclusively to promote live events (ex. tradeshows, conference, etc). In most cases these sites content fewer than 100 pages and include information for the upcoming event with links to register. Some time after the event has ended, we would redesign the site and start promoting next years event...essentially starting over with a new site (same domain). We understand the value that many of these past event pages have for users who are looking for info from the past event and we're looking for advice on how best to archive this content to preserve for SEO. We tend to use concise urls for pages on these sites. Ex. www.event.com/agenda or www.event.com/speakers. What are your thoughts on archiving the content from these pages so we can reuse the url with content for the new event? My first thought is to put these pages into an archive, like www.event.com/2015/speakers. Is there a better way to do this to preserve the SEO value of this content?
On-Page Optimization | | accessintel0 -
Redoing a site - 404 redirect or 301 redirect
I'm redoing a website, should i 404 the old pages, or 301 redirect to the main page? what is better? (around 100 pages)
On-Page Optimization | | mkmedia0 -
What precaution should we take to change the default page of the site
For some reason we wanted to change the default page of my site from example.com to example.com/default.aspx. We will be using 301 redirection to get the back link benefits. Do we need to make any changes in webmaster tool and sitemap too??
On-Page Optimization | | CyrilWilson0 -
No Follow Internal Links
Hi Mozzers, I know that this has been asked a few times and answered as well, I would just like to know some more on the internal link count on a page. I ran the SEOmoz report and many of the pages on the website have more than 150+ internal links. Now, should I use the rel=nofollow tag on some pages that I feel are not important? I have a list of pages which are not important from the SEO point of view, but from the usability factors they need to be there so I cannot remove the links to them. So, would be OK to place the rel=nofollow tag on them. My whole purpose is to reduce the count of internal links on the page as seen by SE's. Now, some say that the rel=nofollow tag does not lower the link count, but it can definitely (I believe) prevent the bots time in getting to those pages, which SEOmoz report also quotes. (__When search engine spiders crawl the Internet they are limited by technology resources and are only able to crawl a certain number of links per webpage. ) So, probably I can save their time. Does anyone have any views on this, Cheers,
On-Page Optimization | | RanjeetP0 -
Nofollow on site-wide banner links
Hi I have a blog in relation to my webshop. On the blog I have two banners linking directly to the webshop on every page (site-wide links). Should I make the banner links nofollow? Thanks, Rasmus
On-Page Optimization | | secubi0 -
ECommerce Site Breadcrumbs Best Practice
I'm working on an Ecom website and I was wondering - For breadcrumbs - is there an SEO and/or UEx preference when it comes to taking them back to the homepage? I have the option of going CATEGORY > SUB CATEGORY > SUB CATEGORY or HOME > CATEGORY > SUBCATEGORY > SUBCATEGORY Each example is hyperlinked except for the lowest level. Thanks
On-Page Optimization | | Blenny0