This is one aspect of most websites today that is completely wrong.
If you are a small online business owner and want to get the winning edge over your competitors then you need to understand website architecture.
With the introduction of content management systems provided by WordPress or Joomla and even your web-host it has become easier than ever before for you a business owner to create and maintain your own website.
All these platforms have made our lives much easier , so much so that just about anyone can build a website today.
However, most people designing websites today have become lazy and reliant on the tools provided when trying to rank the pages of a website, usually without much success.
These content management systems have caused most sites to have a poor website structure which is one way of killing off any chance you ever had of seeing decent rankings no matter how good that content may be.
Common mistakes being made by most website owners is not having relevant and shareable content on their business sites. Whether that’s by using a WordPress blog and simply setting the homepage to display their latest posts or a static site where there is a small introduction to the business then links from the homepage to the products or services they sell.
Building a site this way gives it no real structure and lacks any form of focus and relevance across the site.
A website with good architecture will need a lot less back links and a lot less social interaction to beat most of their competitors online today.
The Fundamentals Of Site Architecture
This is the way in which your site is inter-linked (internal Links) and how your customers can find the products and services that you provide. This is how the search engines also find and index site pages and assign a ranking to those pages. Getting this right will see a huge increase in all aspects of your online business, getting it wrong can see your business fail.
Setting Up A Website For Success
This whole principle of setting up the best site navigation is based on the use of cornerstone content. By following the example below you are not only gong to avoid ever being penalized for using thin content but you will be able to attract more links and social engagement for all of your websites pages.
Understanding The Homepage
I can’t count the amount of times people have contacted me saying that their home page is not ranking for their selected keywords. When asked what keywords they want to rank for its amazing to see the huge list of keywords they present and expect to have top 10 rankings. It’s just not possible to achieve rankings like this anymore. it’s no longer about keywords but more towards brand and social conversation.
The homepage is of course the main hub of your site so it is very important to your business, however you will have more of a chance of getting to the number one position in Google or any search engine if you focus on using your brand and a few very focused keywords to target your homepage.
The homepage because of the way it should be positioned in the search engines is the perfect vehicle to link out to your most valued content. If you are thinking that the most valued content on the site is a sales page or product page then you would be wrong.
Understanding The Content Structure
In previous posts we have talked about cornerstone content and how to use it effectively with-in a website. Now let’s go a little deeper and talk about how this will benefit the site architecture and get pages ranked for the right keywords.
In the diagram above you will see that I have five static content pages listed as an example. The specific role of these pages are to help you rank for the right keywords and add value to the site which in turn will increase user engagement. Lets say those five pages have content about, Mobile Responsive Web Design Basics, Online Marketing Research, Online Business Marketing, SEO Tips and Domain Selection & Web Hosting. These pages are tightly themed and relevant keywords to my online business.
These Pages Help To Generate More Ideas For Your Business
I had written all of these pages before I actually launched the site, this way I had the complete plan of what I wanted and what I was going to be talking about, as well the services being offered. The next step was to break this down even further and find other relevant information for each of these pages where I could link even deeper into the site and of course link back to the main page. In effect I am creating a tightly themed and relevant hub of content that will be used to give the site authority as well as user engagement.
By using this content strategy you not only have the ability to create useful and informative content but you can also uncover more ideas from the initial content you wrote. If you take a look at the page I created on web hosting you will notice I have used the basis of that content to create another 11 posts tightly themed around web hosting, this not only gives the site more authority in general but makes any sales pages I wish to create have much more relevance by making sure you funnel all the relevant content you have written down to the sales pages through internal linking.
Note: Many external websites will not link to a sales or landing page, this is why the supporting content is useful to draw in links and in turn link to the sales or landing page.
What Is The Supporting Content
On this site it’s a collection of relevant posts that compliment the initial Static Content Page. These posts are designed to support the cornerstone page but also allow users to interact through comments or likes and shares on the social media sites. In the diagram above I have a box for External Qualifying Resources these are links you will send out from these posts to the most authoritative sites you can find related to the keyword.
Here is an example of using one page with three supporting content pages. Remember you can have as many supporting pages as you want as long as they are relevant to the first page you created.You can also create as many cornerstone page as you like depending on your site niche.
My site currently uses six keyword specific content pages, some have more than twenty supporting articles all designed to get the visitor firstly to trust me and my site and then secondly take action.
The main content page should attract most of the external links due to its high quality, however you also need to have internal and external links coming into the related pages/posts as well. Social media will work the same, if you have created a high quality article that really helps people in a time of need it will get shared across multiple social networks and so should the supporting content.
Note: I prefer to use WordPress to create sites like this as the related content is always a post that allows user interaction through commenting.
The last piece of the puzzle is what you want to achieve with your online business, whether it’s to get the visitor to a product page or simply to get their email address into an opt-in form.The plan here is to increase the relevancy of your site in your selected market, if you can do that you will be rewarded not just from the search engines but many of your visitors as well.
When this content marketing strategy is implemented properly by using engaging helpful content and the right internal and external linking strategies you will see the authority and the ranking of your online business increase substantially.
