Site Architecture for a Services Company

[Stryde]

Hey everyone,

I'm doing the keyword research for a new virtual assistant services website that I am building.

Being that there's almost a limitless number of services that a customer can outsource to a virtual assistant, I have a lot of service keyword options.

Here's the problem: I don't know how to layout my services in a scalable fashion so that I can continue to add onto the services list (each with their own unique and helpful page) after the website is published.

I have two options:

1. Create a service page with categories, each with links to the individual services. Like on my competitor: http://www.virtualemployee.com/services  but with links to pages focused on the individual service keyword (ex. virtual receptionist services).

2. Don't have a services page, but include the services as blog posts like on my competitor's website: http://www.virtualstafffinder.com/blog.

Obviously, the blog would be much more "scalable" in the terms of adding more services. It also reduces a lot of clutter on my website. However, it's not categorized like the average service or e-commerce website. Not sure if this is necessarily a bad thing.

What do you think?

Your help would be greatly appreciated!

[Stryde]

Thanks for the responses!

I'm still leaning towards option #2 because there are literally hundreds of things that you can outsource to a virtual assistant (VA). Because of that, I believe the user experience would be better just to have a services page only listing the 10 most common services that you can outsource to a VA. Do you agree?

I have the following questions about option #2:

1. Will each page have less page rank (since it's linked from the blog)? Or will it effect rankings at all since it's in the blog section of my site?

2. The page url for each service would be www.taskbullet.com/keyword (in the blog) rather than www.taskbullet.com/virtual-assistant-services/keyword (in the services section). Would this make much of a difference with rankings?

3. The content would be a blog post rather than web content. In your opinion, do you think that the content as a blog post would convert higher than a service page since it's more of a soft sell? For example, I would be creating a blog post like this: http://www.virtualstafffinder.com/virtual-assistant-transcription/ 
rather than a services page that talks about VA transcription.

Again, your help is greatly appreciated!

[Charlene-Wingfield]

I would go with option 1, and then blog about long tail keywords that answer questions at the top and middle of the sales funnel.

I do a lot of service based websites.

Try gathercontent.com to organize everything.  It's a great app.

[RickyShockley]

For ranking purposes I don't think it will make much of a difference whether you go with blog posts or service pages. I think it just a matter of preference. If I HAD to choose, I would probably go with adding the pages and created a "services" page with links to each specific page!

I'll be interested to see others responses...