Treat Each Web Page Like A Website – And Plan It.
November 4, 2010 39 Comments
In order to appreciate the rise and fall of a website, one has to grasp the basics of how a search engine views a website.
To a search robot (spider, engine); each web page is viewed as a website. In other words if you have a 10 page website, then the robot “eyes” it as 10 different websites or let’s call it mini websites. You will also note that many sites have great ranking home pages, but the rest of the site has little or no PR value.
The idea is to try and get as many of our web pages indexed by the search engines as possible, which obviously gets us a better chance to improve our ranking on a SERP (Search Engine Results Page), if we only have two main pages with all the information crammed into them then we certainly lower our odds.
Let’s look at an example to understand this concept; if you have a Shoe Review Site, would you place all the various shoes that you review on a single page? I think not; your main page would be a writeup on various shoes which would link you to a separate web page for each shoe type, which maybe further broken down into different styles of shoes within each sub category. So there would be a hierarchy structure to your website (see Diagram). Each Web Page would consists of detail information pertaining to that shoe style only. This drill down effect is incredibly powerful when it comes to web page ranking.
Following this methodology ensures that each detail page would consist of very powerful selected keywords, meta tags and meta description that pertains to that single style of shoe, giving your web page a great chance to rank high for that particular shoe type. Now imagine if you were to put all those styles on a single web page? How do you think you would rank? You would have hundreds of keywords (for each shoe type), and loads of description for each one of them, it would be one page of information overload.
Look at it in a different light; you are looking for a specific style of soccer shoe and you reach a site that has all types of running, jogging, court, soccer, baseball etc shoes listed on one page, what would be your reaction? I am sure you would hit the back button on your mouse before the page has had a chance to load. On the other hand if you were shown a site that immediately displayed the shoe style you were searching for with only the one shoe style on the page; with detail description and images pertaining to only that shoe, what are your chances you will stay and browse the page and maybe even look around the rest of the site? I would say pretty darn good.
So plan your site well at the design stages. Make each page count by treating it like a mini website. Your initial pages may have some related items grouped on a single page, but your final detail web pages should be fine tuned to consist of one topic (or product) only, allowing you to drill down to a sharp focus point. This will get you ranked higher. When you have many such pages where each web page is focusing on a single topic (or product), your chances of getting ranked higher for some or all of your topics become ever so greater.
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Hello Liliana;
I am glad. That is the whole idea of creating this blog. Hopefully we can all exchange ideas and increase our knowledge base. Appreciate you stopping and commenting.
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Much Thanks.
Hello;
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Hey Maria;
Appreciate the support and encouraging words. Pass the word out to your contacts.
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I am sure you found it interesting, but what is most disappointing is the fact that you are using my blog to get backlinks. I mean when was the last time you met someone called “Insurance”?
Least you can do is respect the effort and the knowledge I share to put down if not your real name at least one that sounds and looks like one.
I am sure you found it interesting, but what is most disappointing is the fact that you are using my blog to get backlinks. I mean when was the last time you met someone called “Insurance”?
Least you can do is respect the effort and the knowledge I share to put down if not your real name at least one that sounds and looks like one.
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Hello Aspergers;
Appreciate your valuable time you spend on our blog.
Thanks.
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Hello Dusti;
What would you like me to elaborate on?
If you take careful note you will observe that the search engines do not index every page of your site right away. When you submit your site, it requests to submit a URL, it does not state enter your home page. Yet almost all of us will submit our home page (index page), and we will all request other websites to link to our home page as well. So most people will end up to your home page and that is the page that will be indexed first by the search engines.
So how do the other pages get indexed? The search engines pick up the other pages from your home page or if you have links from other websites that link to any of your other pages other then your home page. Another way for search engines to index your other pages is by you having a Site Map on the directory of your host site (more on this another day).
So as users what we tend to do is put a whole bunch of stuff on our home page, then submit that, request link from others to it and forget about the rest of our site. What I am stating is give the other pages just as much importance, treat them like each one is a home page, and on each one of these pages place valuable content and link it to other pages (more on this another day). When requesting for links from other sites, have them link to other pages on your site which are of value to those visitors.
When the value of each of your webpages increases (better content, better links to it, is indexed by spiders, more visitors to it), you will note that the PageRank of these pages improves, which in turn improves the entire quality of your website. Remember it is a website (collection of webpages or electronic documents), not just a home page. You want each and every page of your site to improve in rank not just your home page.
I hope this explains my message in more detail If not let me know and I can explain further with specific examples. I am working on producing videos in the near future.
By the way thanks for visiting, it means a lot to me and is very encouraging.
Hi Ron
Will continue as long as I have interested visitors. Which I do.
By the thanks for visting.
Can you provide more information on this? cheers
Great work keep it coming
Much thanks. Comments like these make all the effort worthwhile. I like to keep my thoughts, opinions and knowledge transparent. I hope to provide information in a simple yet beneficial manner to beginners and newcomers.
Beneficial info and excellent design you got here! I want to thank you for sharing your ideas and putting the time into the stuff you publish! Great work!
Hey Mike,
Thanks for your response.
No I do not suggest or recommend more then 2 or at most 3 levels deep. The search engines tend to go 3 levels or perhaps 4 deep when indexing your web pages, after that it tends to become a hit and miss thing.
I would plan Web Pages to be a max of 3 levels deep.
Hope this makes sense.
This is very interesting to read. Does this mean that I should have several levels of web pages that go perhaps more then 4 or 5 levels?
I like this idea.