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FEATURE FOCUS: Building a Web Site Theme with Silosby Bradley Leese, March 31, 2007 Part 1: IntroductionSearch engines award keyword rankings to the site that proves that it is least "imperfect" for the relevancy of a subject or theme. It is the nature of a search engine to try and dissect a site into distinct subjects that add up into an overall theme thereby representing a clear straightforward subject relevancy. More often than not a Web site is a disjointed array of unrelated information with no central theme and thereby suffers in search engines for sought after keyword rankings. Siloing a Web site will serve to clarify your Web site's subject relevance and will lay the ground work for high keyword rankings. The term siloing originated as a way to identify the concept of grouping related information into distinct sections within a Web site. Much like the chapters in a book, a silo represents a group of themed or subject-specific content on your site. The reason this grouping is such a high priority is that search engines award "keyword" relevancy or keyword rankings within their index based on the page or site with the most supporting relevant content. Google was founded upon the concept that a Web site should physically be organized like a doctoral dissertation. A dissertation has a clearly identified table of contents where each chapter is laid out to reinforce the overall theme of the dissertation as a whole. This multiple part series will seek to provide real word examples on how to identify the elements for building an information-rich site that serves both users and search engines with the elements that provide top keyword rankings. The focus of each installment will be on the importance of building a keyword-rich "siloed" themed Web site. In essence, these articles will serve as a step-by-step tutorial on how to implement clear silos that define keyword relevancy site-wide. Often there are great organizations hidden from widespread exposure because they lack an organic search engine optimization strategy or their strategy does not include enough attention to clear subject relevance or siloing. I am going to take this opportunity and offer guidance to one of those organizations. Heifer International's mission statement envisions a world of people living together in peace and harmony by sharing resources akin to the philosophy: "Give a man a fish and he will eat for a day, but teach the man to fish and he will eat for life." Heifer International fulfills their mission by enabling communities to receive livestock from donations around the world and then teaching those communities to care for those animals and pay forward those gifts to surrounding communities. The Heifer organization does more than just hand out food, rather they teach members of these communities to care for themselves and those around them. After evaluating their current website I can see many opportunities to organize their current information into themed silos. Search engines evaluate multiple segments throughout a Web site's construction before awarding subject relevancy which then equates to keyword rankings. This introduction will give an outline and brief description of each segment and each subsequent article will provide a full tutorial on how to fully implement those segments. Part Two: Subject ThemingOur next article will go more in depth on the topic of subject theming. If you don't have a clear idea of what the primary theme of your Web site is then search engines and users will be confused, as well. Begin by creating a simple outline: Define the major theme or primary subject that you want to become relevant for and create an organization chart or linear outline to cement your ideas in place. Often it is not until you actually put pen to paper that major subject complications or contradictions surface. Diagram 1: Subject Organization Chart Diagram 2: Word Sentence Outline
After completing this exercise ask yourself what keyword phrases users actually type into the search engines when looking for this information. Going back to heifer.org, we can see how search engines may become confused as to subject relevancy. After a lengthy evaluation of Heifer International's top level pages, we discover that of the 103 keywords that Hiefer.org places in their keywords tags, only 15 words have activities of 100 or more searches a day. Of those, heifer.org is ranking in the top 50 placements in the search engines for only two keywords. Part Three: Folder/Directory StructureThe grouping or organization of content on the site is of great significance. Recall the analogy of a Web site being compared to a book: the table of contents describes the overall subject in the introduction and then breaks down into different chapters that support that major subject. The different chapters are the different top level folders, while each chapter is made up of HTML pages which may be compared to the individual files within that folder. The folder or directory is the physical organization of the files (Pages) in that root directory. The structure is mapped from the URLs after the search engines spiders the pages. Because a spider cannot physically read the files on the server, the site owner can use several strategies for dynamically organizing data, making even the most ornery Content Management Systems (CMS) flexible for implementing directory structures. There are 2 separate ways to understand how a directory structure looks visually: Diagram 3: URL Structure
Diagram 4: Windows Explorer Example Learning to group related subject files on your website will provide greater primary and supporting subject relevancy while also lending a strategy for identifying which sections of your site require greater amounts of content. Part Four: Link StructureThere are three major subjects that define what impact link structure has on implementing silos on your site. Internal site linking is the nature of how pages are linked within the span of your site, whether it be linking between major silos or cross-linking related subject pages. Outbound or External linking represents the often misunderstood and much needed offsite links to "expert" sites that are subject relevant and provide resources to users that the site will not or cannot offer. Finally, Inbound linking is the format by which other Web sites link to the pages on your Web site. Learn to understand the difference between links from sites that support your theme and links from sites that have no subject matter relevance. The first are good but the second kind may dilute your subject relevancy. By having sites with unrelated subject matter link to your site it causes the "expertness" relevancy to be diluted. The purpose of inbound links is to reinforce subject relevance. This is a major issue for a number of sites that engage in webrings or purchased links because they often originate from a completely irrelevant site. For example, 90% of Heifer International links are from fast food restaurants or sites that sell used cars. These links do not count very much toward Heifer International's relevance because they are not subject matter experts in their own right and cannot vouch that Heifer.com is a great resource. Diagram 5: Link Structure On Page ElementsProbably the least understood element is the importance of tying together on page elements with the overall subject theme of a Web site. What are the elements within the page that will complete subject relevance? Remember that all search engines interpret subject relevance by examining over 100 algorithm factors. The site with the greatest sum of required parts is awarded the highest rankings. Subject relevance is determined by the clear organization of related content with close attention to detail, proving that your site to be the "least imperfect." This means that the content can be easily spidered and is organized to reinforce major themes, subtopics and related subjects with keyword density, frequency and distribution in mind. Diagram 6: Keyword Density Part Five: Keyword Rich ContentAll content is not equal. There are numerous factors that determine the value or success of how content supports your major subject theme. Evaluate different methods towards determining how your content measures up to your competitors. Learn how to determine the originality of the content on your site. You should avoid duplicate content at all times. If your competitors, affiliates or anyone else reuses your content be aware that this will negatively effect how much credit search engines give to your content. This applies to many content formats from on page content borrowed from company brochures to informative articles or .PDF files that reside on your site. Determine whether spiders can access the content that is displayed or whether it is formatted in such a way that it is virtually ignored. Use these same tips and tools to determine how your competition measures up. Learn the necessary steps to deciding whether you need to add content as well as the strategy for writing keyword-rich content that supports your theme. Diagram 7: CopyScape Part Six: Site Maps, SitemapsHaving a site map on the root directory has long been of central importance to helping to search engines identify all the major sections of your Web site. Now Google, Yahoo and MSN have upped the stakes with the new sitemaps.xml standard, which is a XML version of the site map that you are advised to place within the root directory. Instead of having to change the HTML file by hand, you can just run a free tool and it will spider your site and spit out what it thinks is the logical structure of your site in the form of a site map. Both versions have the potential to serve the search engines in 2 distinct ways. They offer an additional point of access to each page on your site. More importantly they document the physical directory structure on your site. There are strategies within both versions to transparently document, for search engines and users, the distinct chapters or subjects that comprise the sum of all the pages on your site. This structure of links should provide support to your major subject theme. It may become clear that after reviewing your current site map that your site is not as organized as well as you might have previously thought. Learn to use site maps to illustrate how organize the content on your site and format the new XML Sitemaps to best serve your site's subject relevance. Diagram 8: SiteMaps Edited April 19, 2007
For permission to reprint or reuse any materials, please contact us. To learn more about our authors, please visit the Bruce Clay Authors page. Copyright 2007 Bruce Clay, Inc. |
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