Search engine optimization tips - links and link structure

I promised you before another episode in the "Search engine optimization tips" series. So here it is: links and link structures. Both of them are very important.

Link structure

Why is this so important? Because is the key to success. A site is like a house: the better is built, the better and more durable will it be. And a site’s structure is translated in its link structure. What are the important things in determining the best of it? Here we go:

• a site’s link structure have to use the bubbles principle, being a well built and logically  tree. You start from the main page, then divide the content in the main categories, then each category is divided on its term in subcategories, etc. Every node of the tree must be related upwards with it’s predecessors. (Example: www.business.com/financial-business/banks/credits/The-best-credit.html  You can get credits from banks, where you can make financial businesses, that are part of the vast domain of businesses. Something like this… )
• a site’s link structure must be determined by someone skillful in SEO and link building. He will be able to target the best words for each category with some help from his researching tools
• each category/subcategory name should be full of targeted keywords, with potential of high traffic
• The order of the directories in a link is important (related upwards like i said)
• Use as few directories as possible
• parameters, ids or any kind of directories that would interfere with the logic of the structure have to be avoided
• Use a personalised 404 page that returns the 404 HTTP status code
• Very Important: Plan you site’s link structure carefully. Any following change might result in a head ache, as it should use 301 redirecting. That means telling people and bots that the page moved from where it was to where it is right now. Don’t you even think about making link structure changes if your not familiar with redirects.

The link structure is just a huge organized and logic tree

Links

A friend of mine asked me a couple of days ago to review his new site. From the beginning, i told him that he should rewrite the URLs. And he asked: "Do you think that’s so important?" Well, it’s very important. Both people and bots understand easier a nice looking URL than a very long one, stuffed with lots of parameters and ids.

Here are a couple of important things you should know about links:

• use mod rewrite to transform your dynamic links into static user-friendly ones. The final link should look like you planned it in your link structure.
• use the rules above in rewriting links
• use only  "/" for separating directories in a link and "-" for separating words inside a directory
• use links canonicalization
• don’t have duplicate pages (different links for the same pages

Link rewrite is done via the .htaccess file. If you’re not familiar with it, find someone who is. Modern CMSs like Wordpress, Joomla, etc have their own mod-rewrite functions, so things are made a lot easier.

After you’ve managed to plan and implement you link structure, you should also take care of what pages will get to be indexed by search engines. More about this and about how to control link juice flow through your site, in the next post from the "Search Engine Optimization tips" series.

Tags: engine optimization, links, Search, SEO, tips