Search Engine Optimization (Part 2)
Now that you’ve done your keyword research from part 1, it’s time to start designing the blueprint of the web site. Web site structure is an important factor in industrial search engine optimization. As we learned in the overview of search engine optimization, search engines are interested mainly in two things about a web site: what is it about (its theme), and how good is the information on that theme (its quality). The structure of your web site addresses the first concern: establishing the theme of your web site.
This is extremely important, since a search engine can’t rank your site within a particular category if it doesn’t know what category it’s in. And so, helping the search engine robots get a complete picture as to the theme of your site can go a long way toward helping you rank well within that category.
So how do you do that?
Let’s use as an example a manufacturing firm which sells industrial tubing and hoses. You would start by making the home page about the most general subject: Industrial Tubing and Hoses. Add those terms in the proper meta tags and also in the content of page itself. Now, using keyword rich navigation links to second tier pages: one about tubing, another about hoses, etc… From those pages, add more links to third tier pages, which are more specific still: rubber hoses, plastic hoses, etc…
This creates two benefits: it makes things easy for visitors to navigate to what they are looking for, and creates a broad, well defined theme for your web site in the eyes of the search engines. Many web sites I see create a vague and incomplete picture of what it’s company actually sells. Sure, the search engines figure out it’s got something to do with hoses by the content, but it’s not focused and its not complete. And that’s virtually guaranteed to relegate you to search engine obscurity.
To be successful, you should design your web site like a pyramid, from most general at the top to most specific at the bottom. Define each page with its own niche according to where it sits in the pyramid. Do this correctly, and you have the basic architecture required to achieve a high search engine ranking. Next we’ll look at meta tags.
Go to Part 3: Meta Tags
Five Part Series On Search Engine Optimization
- Overview
- Part 1: Keyword Research
- Part 2: Web Site Structure
- Part 3: Meta Tags
- Part 4: Quality Original Content
- Part 5: Internal Linking
- Part 6: Acquiring External Links
» Learn more about Industrial Internet Marketing