Website Structure

[hooperman]

This thread about linking structure made my think about how I usually organise links to my pages as I add them to a site.

What I sometimes do is have a flat file structure - every page has a link from every other page (i.e. you see the same nav links on every page). Every page is accessible from the home page. When I get to about 50 pages I start to think about moving some of the links off to an "archive' page to stop the nav links getting too long (what's the definition of "too long"? - I dunno).

This isn't just about usability. It's also about sending more link juice to my important pages, and less to the unpopular one.

How to choose which links must go?

Ideally, I want to keep the popular/important pages linked to from the home page, so I use Google Analytics to identify pages that don't get much traffic. The younger pages don't tend to get much traffic because of their age, so I have a cut off point of about 6 months: if the page is older than 6 months, but doesn't get much traffic, I remove the link to it from every page and put it on the archives page. I can link to archives page from just the home page or from every page. I prefer to link to it from just the home page.

Before:
link01.jpg
After:
link02.jpg

So if I've got 60 pages, and 20 get only a few visitors, I will push links to those 20 off onto the archive page. Important pages (pages that make money) will stay linked to from every page, regardless of traffic. Fewer links on each page means more link juice passing through each one.

Does anybody do something similar to this? Any glaring dumbness in what I'm doing?

[Clinton]

Personally I don't lay a lot of store by sitemap.xml but I thought this was what assigned weight. Is that not the case?

Matt Cutts had a thing or two to say about PR sculpting:

I wouldn’t recommend it, because it isn’t the most effective way to utilize your PageRank. In general, I would let PageRank flow freely within your site. The notion of “PageRank sculpting” has always been a second- or third-order recommendation for us. I would recommend the first-order things to pay attention to are 1) making great content that will attract links in the first place, and 2) choosing a site architecture that makes your site usable/crawlable for humans and search engines alike.

I don't believe everything he says, but even if he does have a point about usability, there must be some anchor text value to what you're doing, hooperman.

On experienced-people.co.uk, I originally - many years ago - organised my navigation by what I thought would help the visitor. On the homepage I have links to articles on both buying and selling of websites. On the website buying page, links are to topics more likely to be of interest to buyers. On the website selling page, links are to topics more likely to be of interest to sellers. On all the pages, I've got links to a few articles that have a more general appeal (not based on how much each page earns).

Is this not how most people do it? I'd be interested in hearing how others have organised their navigation.

[hooperman]

Personally I don't lay a lot of store by sitemap.xml but I thought this was what assigned weight.

I never use a sitemap so I hope not!

On experienced-people.co.uk, I originally - many years ago - organised my navigation by what I thought would help the visitor. On the homepage I have links to articles on both buying and selling of websites. On the website buying page, links are to topics more likely to be of interest to buyers. On the website selling page, links are to topics more likely to be of interest to sellers. On all the pages, I've got links to a few articles that have a more general appeal (not based on how much each page earns).

I like this. I think the what I wrote above has evolved from how I used to code html sites: have a link to every page from every page. Most of my sites had between 20 and 40 pages so that worked out OK. Bigger sites meant longer nav links so some had to go.

Hmmm...tailoring the web page to serve the visitor better. I think you've got something there

[JJMcClure]

Are you actually PR sculpting there Hoop? I'm assuming that you'd know better since Google recently went public with the fact that they don't allow it and haven't been allowing it for over 18 months which is hysterical because of all those PR sculpters out there charging a fortune for using 'nofollow' to funnel PR and it couldn't have been working. PR is divided up equally among the links on the page and if any of them are nofollowed their PR doesn't get shared among the other links on the page, it just vanishes into the ether. The only way to increase the amount of PR a link can pass on is to decrease the number of links on a page.

[hooperman]

Are you actually PR sculpting there Hoop?

Nah, I'm just making it easier for visitors to get at my more popular material . Wouldn't the result of doing that send more link juice to the more popular pages though?

The idea of tailoring my navigation links is good, I can't believee I've not made better use of that before. I think I got into the mindset of having the same nav links on every single page. i.e. create a template page and simply copy that each time you add a new page, adding a new link to it to the nav list.

[JJMcClure]

Wouldn't the result of doing that send more link juice to the more popular pages though?
ist.

You mean if a page had more internal links pointing to it than other pages? Yes, it would make that page 'warmer' than other pages (to borrow a metaphor from HoboSEO) and send a clear signal to Google that you consider that page important.

The idea of tailoring my navigation links is good, I can't believee I've not made better use of that before. I think I got into the mindset of having the same nav links on every single page. i.e. create a template page and simply copy that each time you add a new page, adding a new link to it to the nav list.

Whatever works for your human visitors right? I just pretend that search engines don't exist when I'm creating site structures and just try to keep it simple. If my visitors can't make sense of what they're seeing within a few seconds of arriving and can't find what they're looking for then it doesn't matter how well I rank, I'm gonna convert badly.

[Clinton]

if any of them are nofollowed their PR doesn't get shared among the other links on the page, it just vanishes into the ether.

I've heard Matt Cutts saying that. I don't believe him because the maths doesn't add up. As people add more nofollows is it the argument that the total PR across the web falls? That's not how PR works as defined by the original documentation.

[JJMcClure]

I've heard Matt Cutts saying that. I don't believe him because the maths doesn't add up. As people add more nofollows is it the argument that the total PR across the web falls? That's not how PR works as defined by the original documentation.

No it's distributed into the overall PR ether so technically it doesn't actually vanish, just becomes a neglegible entry into the PR calculations. Whatever, it doesn't benefit you to try to channel PR on-site, can't be done. Nofollow was invented to help prevent comment spam, not to allow people to manipulate the SERP. We found a way to use it, they nerfed it. And the wheel turns...

[tke71709]

I never use a sitemap so I hope not!

Why not?

[hooperman]

Why not?

Why would I? Are they supposed to help me in some way? I thought that they were initially created to help spidering, and I never had problems with that so I've never used a sitemap.

Do they give me some kind of benefit? I know I could research this, but you're here now

EDIT: I seem to remember reading what they said about Sitemaps, but none of that seemed to offer a benefit I wasn't already getting.