FEATURE FOCUS: Building a Web Site Theme with Silos, Part 2
by Bradley Leese, April 30, 2007
Subject Theming
Google's mission as stated on the company information page is "to organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful." No other engine strives as efficiently as Google to be accountable for relevant results and, when presented with obvious signs of error, they have corrected their course time and again. Google assigns high rankings in a predictable fashion that anyone can learn to model thereby becoming the most relevant for their site focus. There are many factors in a website that provide evidence of subject relevance beginning with a clear understanding what it means to theme a website.
In order to rank for keywords within Google, Yahoo and MSN, it is necessary to provide information that is organized in clear language that search engines (i.e. information aggregators) understand. When your information has been stripped away from its design and layout, will it measure to be the most relevant aggregate information compared to that of other sites? If so then you have a high likelihood of achieving highly rankings and in turn will attract customers researching and shopping for products and services.
This article will seek to answer the following:
- What subject themes is your website currently ranking for in the search engines?
- What subject themes is your website legitimately relevant for?
- How to implement clear subject themes?
Bruce Clay, when speaking at conferences and in training, often explains the importance of creating subject themes, "silos", by using the analogy that most websites are like that of a jar of marbles. He states that a search engine can only decipher meaning when the subjects are clear and distinct. Take a look at the picture of the jar of marbles below and contemplate how search engines will classify the theme(s) of this jar?
In this jar we see Green marbles, Red marbles, and Yellow marbles as well as other various colors that are all mixed together with seemingly no order or emphasis. It would be reasonable to assume that search engines would classify the subject as a jar of marbles.
If we then separate out each group of colored marbles into separate jars (or sites), they would be classified as a jar of Green Marbles, a jar of Red marbles and a jar Yellow marbles.
Green Marbles |
Red Marbles |
Yellow Marbles |
However, if we wanted to theme all three marbles into a single jar, we would create distinct silos or categories within the site that would allow the subject themes to be Green marbles, Red marbles, Yellow marbles and finally the generic term "marbles." Most Web sites never clarify the main subjects they want their site to become relevant for. Instead they try to be all things to all people.
The goal for a site that wants to rank for more than a single generic term is to selectively decide what their site is and is not about. Rankings often are damaged in two major ways either by including irrelevant content or having too little content for a subject on a website.
What subject themes is your website currently ranking for in the search engines?
The best place to start to identify what themes are currently most relevant is to begin by examining the historical data of the current website. The first and foremost thing to do is to examine the data from the following sources:
- Web Analytics Evaluation
- PPC Programs
- Tracked Keyword Phrases
Each of these sources of information will provide the history of who visits the website and why. It won't tell us why the site isn't ranked for desired keywords directly, but it will help to understand the nature of how search engines value the themes on the site.
Web Analytics Evaluation
There are several ways to obtain the data or logs for the history of search engine spiders and the footprints of visitors to your site. First off you may go right to the source and download the actual log files from your server and use a program like Web Trends or dozens of other desktop applications that help decipher internet traffic data. Many businesses also use on-demand services that use cookies or JavaScript to pull live data on the patterns of search engines and visitors through an online service like Omniture, ClickTracks or Google Analytics a free service. However you access the data history, we are looking for the search terms that brought users to your site.
PPC Programs
Other clues as to the words that your current site may be relevant for is to evaluate the words that your company bids on with Pay Per Click programs offered by all major search engines. Often companies will bid on words that they would like to be relevant for within the organic search arena but for one reason or another they have not yet received ranking success.
Tracked Keyword Phrases
The last and most accessible method of discovering your website's most important subject themes is to ask people within your company which keywords are most important. Often in interviewing the president, marketing and sales managers, you will get a clear idea of what the company is trying to rank for in organic search results.
Keyword Research
After creating a list of 10-100 keyword terms that appear to be most relevant to your company's product and/or services, then it is time to begin keyword research. During the process of keyword research, the first goal is to grow that keyword list as large as possible. Cover as many relevant subjects as is even somewhat connect to the Web site's subject themes. Use Trellian's Keyword Discovery tool and WordTracker to identify every possible synonym that could even remotely related to the site's subject matter.
For SEOToolset users, after you have created as large a list as possible, enter all the keywords into the Page Keyword tool Bulk Keyword Upload. After entering all your words and phrases, press the Replace All Keywords button and close the page. Then reenter the Page Keywords and you will see the words assemble themselves from the highest activity to the least searched terms. Delete from the list the words that have a too low activity, probably anything less than 100 searches per day unless it's a very targeted, relevant term. Then go to the Ranking Monitor page, scroll to the bottom and press Submit Monitor. After the monitor finishes go to the Client Reports and Run a Domain Ranking Report. This report will identify the words you currently rank for across all major search engines.
After answering the question of where the site currently ranks, you will know two major factors. You will know what you are ranked for and you will know what you are not ranked for in the search engines. The next challenge will be to understand what subjects your site is legitimately relevant for and how to understand why you are ranked as you are currently.
What subject themes are you currently relevant for?
There is a wide margin between what is possible and what the current reality is and how your business is affected by these realities. Many site owners get really incensed that they are not better ranked for terms they feel they are relevant for and feel that engines misjudge the value of their site. There are rare exceptions where this is true due to many factors, but 99% of the time the truth is that the site is not focused enough on its dominant topics. The skill lies in knowing how to determine what a site is about after stripping away all the visual components.
Keyword Density Analyzer
A great place to begin is to run a Single Page Keyword Density Analyzer (KDA) within the SEOToolSet. (Non-toolset subscribers can try out the tool on our Free SEO Tools page.) The KDA will reveal the Density, Distribution and Frequency of keyword phrases used throughout the page. By running the main pages of the site through this tool, you can begin to identify if the major themes are used throughout the Meta tags, Headings, ALT attributes and Body Content. If your terms seem to be absent then make a clear note that the keyword densities seem low. Evaluate how often a phrases in repeated in each major category element and make notes of common repeated phrases and low repeated phrases as frequency. Are all the terms concentrated in the top of the pages? If so make a note that the distribution could stand to be more spread out.
Multiple Page KDA
SEOToolset subcribers can use the Multi-page KDA to further help their siloing efforts. After evaluating if the pages throughout your site contain keyword rich densities, compare your pages to that of the top 10 competitors for your major keyword terms. Click on the Ranking Monitor scroll to the Research Summary and enter the first keyword phrase and press the submit button. This process will select 10 of the highest ranking sites for that term across all the major search engines. After following the next 2 steps laid out in the toolset, you will be given a report that summarizes why high ranking sites are ranked and the recommendations for how to proceed to bring your own pages to the same level. After copying each report, record what companies rank for which terms.
Search Engine Index Tools
The last test is to evaluate each major engine by using the following search index tools. While each engine has their select syntax the engine I am going to reference will be Google. Take a moment to learn about all the ways you can manipulate (www.google.com) their index data and then highlight 2 separate functions: the site command and the link command. In Google the current 2 most relevant measurements of rankings are how many pages a site has about a subject and how many inbound inks reference the site. Use these tools to then research why the competitor sites rank. And create a graph that documents the contrast between your site and the competition.
How to implement clear subject themes?
You now know what you are ranked for and therefore are considered to be relevant for and why your competition ranks the way they do. What is required to improve rankings beyond this point is to begin with making a commitment to sculpting your site to be equivalent and then aspiring to become the most relevant resource to achieve subject supremacy. It is important at this point to identify the areas that you may feel you are relevant for but you do not have the content yet to support. Is it worth the work to write 500 pages of content to rank for a subject that your site is not really about with the likely possibility that your site will become less relevant for more important terms? It is of the utmost importance that you make these choices now and consider the ramifications of these commitments.
Establishing a Clear Theme
There are many ways to establish a clear theme, beginning with 2 ways to visualize the primary and secondary categories that you would prefer your site to become.
Diagram 1: Subject Organization Chart
The Organization Chart is an easily accessible tool that can be found within Microsoft Visio and countless other flowchart creation software choices. It provides the opportunity to visually explain to others involved in the website what the focus of the website should be and what subjects actually serve to distract the search engines from the main subjects.
Diagram 2: Word Sentence Outline
- Major Theme
- Subtopic 1
- Subtopic 2
- Subtopic 3
- Subtopic 4
The sentence outline can be created in Microsoft Word and it is available in virtually every word processing program around. It makes the task of organizing subject easy as is equally as powerful as the organization chart, allowing you to highlight the pros and cons of subject categorization.
The grouping or organization of content on the site is often compared to how the table of contents describes identifies the chapters in a book to support the overall theme. Folders or directories summarize the physical organization of the files (pages) in that directory.
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.