How to structure articles on a website.
-
Hi All,
Key to a successful website is quality content - so the Gods of Google tell me. Embrace your audience with quality feature rich articles on your products or services, hints and tips, how to, etc.
So you build your article page with all the correct criteria; Long Tail Keyword or phrases hitting the URL, heading, 1st sentance, etc.
My question is this
Let's say you have 30 articles, where would you place the 30 articles for SEO purposes and user experiences.My thought are:
1] on the home page create a column with a clear heading "Useful articles" and populate the column with links to all 30 articles.
or
2] throughout your website create link references to the articles as part of natural information flow.
or
3] Create a banner or impact logo on the all pages to entice your audience to click and land on dedicated "articles page"Thanks Mark
-
Oleg makes some good points about putting those links on an index page for the articles (like the articles "section" of the site, which would be linked to from the home page) instead of putting every article link on the home page. However, I would argue that if these articles aren't helping "your website accomplish its goals" they shouldn't be on your site at all. Even if "SEO" is considered a goal of your website, you're bound to fail if you publish article-style content just for that reason.
So in your strategy I would really think about how this content is helping your users. For example, where in the process of their journey on your site they might need/want to see that content (e.g. 'How to Choose a Widget' might be linked to from your widget category, or 'Ten Ways to Use Your New Widget' might go on a widget product page)? That would be where you want to link to it from.
-
Thank you Oleg for your response.
Are there any other considerations I should be thinking about in my strategy?
Thanks Mark
-
#1 - That's probably too many links to have in the sidebar. I would make a link to a "Useful Articles" page and categorize the articles there. This does depend on how you want your visitors to flow through your stie.
Yes to #2. Link with keyword rich anchor text too.
#3 - only if those articles help your website accomplish its goal(s).
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Please have a look at my website. I am stuck here.
Here might be the reason. I had loads of unnecessary content so I given them the noindex tag. I tried to change the robot.txt file but that shouldn't be a problem in SEO. First my site had a country specific domain and then a year later I changed it to .Com, as to target globally (Mainly US). My site is ranking well in that specific country (never been close to page 1) on page 3 almost every time. It's not ranking in other countries, despite the fact that I've not targeted it to any specific country since the domain was changed. A month ago, I deleted 404 pages and all the thin content which was indexed in the SERP and also deleted the duplicated contents and as well as the copied contents. Meanwhile I've also tried changing the headings in some of the products articles as they were causing the duplicate heading issue. I've recently switched my hosting from the UK based server to the Us based server because the last hosting has bad downtime. So far until now nothing seems to be working in my favor. I'm just tired of resolving issues and in return finding a zero result. This is my devil site: 10stuffs.com plz check it out and tell me why my site is not ranking at all and what sould I do.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | anshu14320 -
Website dropped out from Google index
Howdy, fellow mozzers. I got approached by my friend - their website is https://www.hauteheadquarters.com She is saying that they dropped from google index over night - and, as you can see if you google their name, website url or even site: , most of the pages are not indexed. Home page is nowhere to be found - that's for sure. I know that they were indexed before. Google webmaster tools don't have any manual actions (at least yet). No sudden changes in content or backlink profile. robots.txt has some weird rule - disallow everything for EtaoSpider. I don't know if google would listen to that - robots checker in GWT says it's all good. Any ideas why that happen? Any ideas what I should check? P.S. Just noticed in GWT there was a huge drop in indexed pages within first week of August. Still no idea why though. P.P.S. Just noticed that there is noindex x-robots-tag in headers... Anyone knows where this can be set?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | DmitriiK0 -
Redirecting M Dot Mobile Website to Responsive Design Website Questions
Hi amazing Moz community 🙂 Couldn't find this question anywhere, and knew this was the place to ask! We are helping a client redirect an M Dot website to a Responsive Design website. We want to retain our mobile rankings for keywords. Three questions - We should use 301 redirects from the M Dot website to the new website correct? (not 302s?) How long does it take for Google to understand that we have launched a responsive website? Can we remove the 301 redirects after a few days (if the M Dot website interferes/breaks the new Responsive website)? We have verified an account on Google Search Console for the M Dot website, along with a mobile sitemap that has been submitted and verified. What should we do with this M Dot GSC account? Just delete it? Or keep it and upload the NEW XML Sitemap with the new WWW links (because the website is responsive). THANK YOU!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | accpar0 -
Website URL Structure - keyword targeting on homepage vs internal pages
I have developed a few websites before where the homepage contains the content for the keywords I was targeting. This has been reasonably successful as I have found it easy enough to get links to the homepage. I am considering a new site in a totally different industry that I am thinking about structuring like this: mybrand.com (not necessarily targeting any keywords) mybrand.com/important-keyword-1/ (definitely want to target) mybrand.com/important-keyword-2 (equally important as 1st keyword) There will be several (30-ish) other pages targeting keywords but they are not as significant as the two mentioned above, more so they are about publishing informative information. The two important keywords are quite different but industry related. My questions are: should I be careful targeting keywords away from the homepage when the homepage gets the most links? Would I be better off building 2 different websites where the keyword content is captured in the homepage? Thanks,
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | BGu0 -
Construction website
Hi, I have a construction website that is aimed at tradesmen. There are 2 goals of the site: 1. To allow potential customers to sign up for a trade account. 2. To allow existing customers to access to products and login to their account to make an order. The site is full of categories and products which should be indexed so we rank for these trade products. The homepage redesign is where i am having an issue: Currently the site is set up like a standard retail site but without prices, which are viewable only when logged in. The homepage is designed such that there is several call to actions about promotions, services and to apply for a trade account, that apply to both existing and potential customers. At the moment there is a poor conversion to get potential customers to apply for a trade account. This is because there is too much distraction away from this goal and they are allowed to engage other areas of the site freely. The main purpose of the homepage should be to encourage potential customers to sign up. The secondary purpose to for existing customers to access the accounts and products. I believe potential customers should not be exposed to the categories and products as it is a distraction from the primary goal. Potential customers, i.e. Tradesmen, would already have a certain understanding of the types of products we provide, so I don't feel it is necessary to allow them to crawl the rest of the site unless they have an account. What are your thoughts on that? Here is my lack of understanding: On the homepage, if I restrict access to categories and products to existing account holders only, where a login is required to proceed, would that mean Google cannot access these pages to index them? Or is this only controlled by NoFollows & Robots.txt? Obviously not indexing is undesirable. I do understand potential customers will need some information about our range of products but the idea is to coerce them to sign up for an account so they can see this information. The more information that is provided to a potential customer, the higher the probability a person can make a decision against applying for an account. Restricting access creates a motivator to reveal information and we capture their data to converse with them personally. This increases the probability of us being able to retain their interest by providing a customised service based on their needs. All of this I feel makes perfect sense to me, the only query/obstacle I have is the indexing of the site. If Google cannot index pages that are restricted by account access, then I would like suggestions to solve/compromise/optimise the above. Just to address the desired behaviour of index pages. If in search a our product page appears, the person clicking the link would either be redirected or exposed to a login or sign up screen to view. Thank you so much for your help. Antonio
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | AVSFencingSupplies0 -
What should be done with old news articles?
Hello, We have a portal website that gives information about the industry we work in. This website includes various articles, tips, info, reviews and more about the industry.We also have a news section that was previously indexed in Google news but is not for the past few month.The site was hit by Panda over a year ago and one of the things we have been thinking of doing is removing pages that are irrelavant/do not provide added value to the site.Some of these pages are old news articles posted over 3-4 years ago and that have had hardly any traffic to.All the news articles on the site are under a /archive/ folder sorted by month and year, so for example a url for a news item from April 2010 would be /archive/042010/article-nameMy question is do you think removing such news articles would benefit the site helping it get out of Panda (many other things have been done in the site as well), if not what is the best suggested way to keep these articles on the site in a way which Google indexes them and treats them well.thx
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Tit0 -
What do you do with outdated news and articles?
What do you guys do with your old content/news/articles? Do you just leave them on your site forever for historical reasons? It goes without saying that you wouldn't delete an article that has links pointing to it. But if there aren't any links, it doesn't rank and it doesn't receive traffic… do you just scrap it? How say you? Update: I would also like to throw in that I have a client who in 2006/2007 used content from another site. What would you do with that content after this amount of time? Bother with it?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | BeTheBoss0 -
Best website structure for product benefits and features.
I'm in disagreement with my partner over how best to represent our products' benefits and features on the homepage of our website. I'm interested in this from primarily a SEO perspective but it obviously has an impact on conversions as well. I believe that a homepage shouldn't contain too much information so as not to overwhelm the user, a brief sentence or two about each benefit with a link to another page with in depth info about the related feature. Each of these inner pages would be optimized and contain much more content that you could put on the homepage example below. Each Please see wireframe A He believes in more information on the homepage. There is more content to index which he believes is important for the homepage. Also, by using tabs most of the content is hidden from initial view so its doesn't clutter the page and the user doesn't have to leave the page to decide whether he is interested in the software. Please see wireframe B below. I'd really love to hear from other Moz'ers which they would choose and why?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Riona0