• The relationship between content and keywords, also types of content (not info-graphics) • How a website looks to Google (internal linking and priority) • How to use this knowledge to build a perfect website architecture (most time on this)

1. How to Structure a Website for SEO
2014/03/11

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3. What We’re Talking About…

4. TODAY WE’RE TALKING ABOUT
The Relationship Between Content & Keywords
1.
Why does everyone talk about content?
2.
How much content do I need to rank for a keyword?
3.
What types of content do successful SEOs use?
How a Website Looks to Google
1.
What are the effects of site-wide links?
2.
What is siloing and why should I use it?
3.
Do I use blog content or static pages?
Building the Perfect Website
1.
Start with a segmented keyword strategy
2.
Decide on a content strategy for each segment
3.
Build your site architecture to reflect your goals

5. Content is King Getting Confusing
The Relationship Between Content & Keywords

6. WHY DOES EVERYONE TALK ABOUT CONTENT?
Most Content Isn’t Supposed to Be Sexy.
But we sure do seem to love infographics as an industry.

7. WHY DOES EVERYONE TALK ABOUT CONTENT?
Content is Supposed to be Useful
This is a locations page. Locations pages let you
rank for every variation of a local search for your
term.
Selling web design? Where do your customers go?
Do you have pages for that? Why not?

8. WHY DOES EVERYONE TALK ABOUT CONTENT?
How Easy is it to Rank for These Keywords?
1.
Wordpress Design Toronto
2.
Wordpress Design Scarborough
3.
Wordpress Design Mississauga
4.
Wordpress Design Etobicoke
5.
Wordpress Design Ajax
6.
Wordpress Design North York
7.
Wordpress Design Brampton
8.
Wordpress Design Vaughan
9.
Wordpress Design Oshawa
10. Wordpress Design Ottawa? Montreal?
11. …Seattle?

9. HOW MUCH CONTENT DO I NEED TO RANK?
1 Keyword = 1 Piece of Content
The simplest and best rule. If you want to rank for a keyword, create
one piece of content targeted at it specifically.
Only Related Content
Build out the most relevant content first. Not sure what this might
be? Spend more time thinking about a content strategy before you
start creating it.
Overkill
Hustle isn’t gone from this industry. Make your content better
quality than anything that ranks right now. Give it images. Work on
the CTAs. Update your design. Write twice as much and as well. Do
better research. Work with better partners. Promote it ten times
more than you think you’d need to.

10. WHAT TYPES OF CONTENT SHOULD I USE?
Location Pages
Unless you’re an eCommerce store
then you can create location
pages.
•
One for every physical location
•
One for every location in which
you have a client
•
One for every location that you
serve
•
One for every location with no
real good reason
Build it like a landing page, these
get bottom of the funnel traffic.
Give it more or less unique content
(700+) and perfect headers.

11. WHAT TYPES OF CONTENT SHOULD I USE?
Location Pages
You can have as many of these as
you’d like.
The only concern is how you
display these internally. The traffic
is going to flow from them to the
rest of the site rather than the
other way around.

12. WHAT TYPES OF CONTENT SHOULD I USE?
Service Pages
Create a page for every type of service that you offer.
Remember 1 Keyword 1 Piece of Content. Your home page should target your brand. Your service pages target
your service keywords, even if you only offer one.
Service pages should have a good amount of content (700+) and be unique.

13. WHAT TYPES OF CONTENT SHOULD I USE?
Service Pages

14. WHAT TYPES OF CONTENT SHOULD I USE?
Location Specific Service Pages
Offer multiple services? Here’s a
fantastic structure to rank for
everything.
•
Location
• Service
• Service
• Service
It’s good to make the content unique
for every page, but start with the
minimum of a unique title tag and
primary heading.

15. WHAT TYPES OF CONTENT SHOULD I USE?
Location Specific Service Pages

16. WHAT TYPES OF CONTENT SHOULD I USE?
Knowledge Base Pages
In SEO someone might ask, “What’s an
LSI Keyword?”
In Web Design it might be, “What’s a
break point?”
We could answer this with extremely
light-weight blog posts, but why not
separate these small pieces of content
into a knowledge base with easily
quoted definitions right at the top.
Not only do you rank for informational
queries, but you’ll also get cited as a
source (and you can ask anyone who
forgets to cite you for a link).

17. WHAT TYPES OF CONTENT SHOULD I USE?
Knowledge Base Pages
If you have a small subset of knowledge
base keywords you can use a flat
architecture.
Otherwise you may want to create a
two-level structure with categories.

18. WHAT TYPES OF CONTENT SHOULD I USE?
Use Case Pages
If your site is B2B, what industries do you work in? If they’re B2C, what generic personas (athletes, foodies,
men, women, children) do their fall under?
eCommerce for Retail? Great, that’s a keyword and we can group similar Use Case keywords into a section
of the site.

19. WHAT TYPES OF CONTENT SHOULD I USE?
Use Case Pages
These pages are both sales material and search friendly.

20. WHAT TYPES OF CONTENT SHOULD I USE?
Summary
Just keep in mind that there’s more to
building a site than service pages and a
blog!

21. How a Website Looks to Google

22. WHAT ARE THE EFFECTS OF SITE-WIDE LINKS?
Back to Basics
A link passes link equity. If I link to a page internally, I’m telling Google that that page has my vote.
The page with the most links wins.
Now let’s assume I have 100 pages on my site. Page B and C are my service pages so I want them to have the
most links going to them. So I add links to them from the content of my home page.
A couple months later my landlord is knocking for rent again and I’m ignoring him as I struggle to figure out
what’s going wrong with my wonderful website.
I look at my Screaming Frog report and it’s telling me that every page on the site has 100 internal links going
to it.
What? But I only linked to those two pages... Except
for my header and footer navigation. Which include
drop downs. Which link to every page on the site.
So what I’m actually doing is telling Google that
every page on the site have the same value.

23. WHAT ARE THE EFFECTS OF SITE-WIDE LINKS?
Compile Brand Pages
A brand page is an “About Us,” “Our Company,” “Who We
Are,” “Our History,” and a hundred other variations that
people tend to use.
Always keep Our Client or Portfolio pages though.
Check Internal Links With Screaming Frog
Screaming Frog is a free SEO tool that you need to
learn how to use. Look for the Internal Link Count.
Export it, sort by highest, and if the top pages
aren’t the ones you want them to be then you’re
screwing up.
Silo All of the Things
Siloing is the art of grouping similar pages. There
are many ways to silo your pages, but the point is
that only the highest level page in the group will get
a sitewide link.

24. WHAT IS SILOING AND WHY SHOULD I USE IT?
Siloing is the Art of Grouping Similar Pages
Let’s say that we’re working with a web design website. It’s doing alright by itself because the owner of the
site is A) a web designer and B) a prolific writer. But for some reason, the more pages she writes, the lower
she ranks for her other keywords.
Right now she’s linking to every page on
the site from the home page with a
confusing menu structure.
So:
1.
What’s good about this site?
2.
What’s wrong with it?
3.
What silos do you see?

25. WHAT IS SILOING AND WHY SHOULD I USE IT?
Web Design Though…
She’s got some decent content, but we need to structure it a bit. Let’s start with Web Design.
I know that “Web Design” is a head term. A head term is the one that everyone in your industry is trying to
rank for. Since this page is so hard to rank it needs the most juice, so we make it the sitewide link.
Since everything below it is contextual to it, every page in this silo make more sense together.

26. WHAT IS SILOING AND WHY SHOULD I USE IT?
Starting to Make More Sense
We can do this for every other category that we can find to make a bit more sense of this site. Notice as we
do that content opportunities come up naturally. Web Development, for example, needs more content.
Search Engine Optimization as well.

27. WHAT IS SILOING AND WHY SHOULD I USE IT?
Remember Content Types?
But what about the location pages? That’s a whole new level of opportunity. I’ve siloed them into areas and
chosen the other terms I want to focus on. If I want to I can expand these later.
Green just so you can see the old pages.

28. WHAT IS SILOING AND WHY SHOULD I USE IT?
Content Siloing is More than a URL Structure
Just remember as you implement this that you have to structure your navigation this way as well. Include
sitewide links only to the top of the individual silos.

29. DO I USE BLOG CONTENT OR STATIC PAGES?
Don’t Always Use Blog Content
Your blog is for link baiting, relationship building, time
sensitive information and conversational content.
It should rank for informational keywords.
Don’t Always Use Static Pages
Static pages are sales pages (service, location) or
conversion pages (whitepapers etc.). They’re what drive
you well converting traffic.
They should rank for middle or bottom of funnel keywords.
Use Both
Work in this order:
1.
Build out static pages to rank.
2.
Use your blog to attract links and build relationships.

30. Building the Perfect Website

31. START WITH A SEGMENTED KEYWORD STRATEGY
Products and Services
Remember to SILO ALL OF THE THINGS.
Locations
Here you just need to check which of your services
get enough searches in which areas to justify
creating pages for them.
Informational
Segment your long tail keywords as well; a good set
of groupings are the ones you’re already using for
products and services, but there’s much more room
here so keep them separate.

32. CONTENT STRATEGY PER SEGMENT
Keep Content Strategy in Mind All of the Time
When you’re doing keyword research you need to keep in mind how you’re going to create one page for
every keyword that you want to rank for.
Don’t know how or when you’re going to create a piece of content for that keyword? Don’t know where it’ll
fit into your structure?
Drop it.

33. CONTENT STRATEGY PER SEGMENT
Products and Services
These are going to be Static Pages. In fact, I’ll have
my designer create a unique page template just for
these since they need to convert pretty well.
I’m thinking, GIANT CTA!!!
Locations
To start I want all major cities, because I can offer
services anywhere. I’ll use duplicate content with a
different page title and H1 until I have a chance to
make them all unique.
I might be able to use a similar template to P&S.
Informational
These are definitely going into the blog.
Maybe I can use some of these topics as ego bait by
interviewing people on the topics, getting guest
posts or doing round ups of great related posts. I’ll
do one a week and aim for links more than rankings.

34. CAT BREAK
http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m6fvxeDx6s1rvnmboo1_1280.jpg

35. SITE ARCHITECTURE
How do I Link my Pages?
Here are the pages I’m going to link sitewide. The
Home Page doesn’t deserve a ton of internal links,
but it’ll be designed to be the highest converting
page
•
Home Page
•
S&P Silo Pages
•
Locations
•
Blog
•
About Us
I’m going to have one T&C and Privacy page linked
from all of my CTAs so that if I want to do PPC I’ll
meet their requirements, but I don’t see a good
reason to link it sitewide.

36. SITE ARCHITECTURE
What’s the URL Structure?
Keep the structure in your URLs. It’ll help you with
analysis in the future, creates breadcrumbs in
Google results automatically (which implies that
Google understands the structure), and just keeps
everything organized.
•
/
•
/seo/
•
/seo/enterprise-seo/
•
/locations/
•
/locations/toronto/
•
/locations/toronto/toronto-seo/
•
/blog/
•
/blog/google-analytics-content-groupings/

37. QUESTIONS?

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