3 Simple On-Page SEO Tips for Beginners

7 years ago

I have few questions:

1. How much anchor text can we use to strengthen the SEO of homepage?
2. Is there any premium plugin to do image optimization automatically?
3. What are the most common phrases which we can link?

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MikeFriedman

7 years ago

Originally Posted by kulwantnagi

2. Is there any premium plugin to do image optimization automatically?

Why do people need a plugin for everything? Jesus. It's not that hard.

What more is a plugin going to do anyhow? Wordpress feeds you all you need when you insert an image.

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SEO-Dave

7 years ago

Originally Posted by MikeFriedman

Why do people need a plugin for everything? Jesus. It's not that hard.

What more is a plugin going to do anyhow? Wordpress feeds you all you need when you insert an image.

To optimize images you name them keyword-phrase.jpg, related-keyword-phrase.jpg etc... BEFORE uploading them to WordPress. Add relevant alt text while uploading the image and WordPress does the rest.

Really simple SEO stuff.

For those who have forgot the alt text part there's a plugin: https://wordpress.org/plugins/seo-image/

This can replace your images alt text to match your posts titles. It's not ideal, but it's better than having no alt text at all or alt text using the image file names slug like random_image-12345. If a huge site use the plugin, if a small site go edit the WordPress posts and add relevant alt text (it's easy).

David

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SEO-Dave

7 years ago

Originally Posted by kulwantnagi

I have few questions:

1. How much anchor text can we use to strengthen the SEO of homepage?
2. Is there any premium plugin to do image optimization automatically?
3. What are the most common phrases which we can link?

Thanks

Unless you use other SEO techniques (there is a way so the other links anchor text counts) only one links anchor text will count, so whatever you add to your home page links anchor text is all that matters.

I use WordPress for most sites, the SEO theme I develop has a home page link near the top of the code with the sites name as anchor text, that's sitewide (most WordPress themes work that way). There isn't a limit in what you can do regarding internal links, everything you do will have positive and negative SEO impacts.

If you have a 30 anchor text word sitewide link back to home (not suggesting this is a good idea, it isn't) because you think that will generate loads of SERPs for the homepage, it's going to also have an impact on the rest of the site: some good, some bad.

A perfectly optimised webpage will only link out to highly relevant webpages, unless all your webpages are tightly niched having a home page sitewide link will have a negative SEO impact on some internal pages, will help others.

If you home page targets "Best Chicken Wings" and so you have a sitewide link with that as anchor text, all the pages on the site targeting phrases related to Best, Chicken and Wings will be helped by the links anchor text. But pages targeting Pastry Puffs won't be helped by the links anchor text.

It's all swings and roundabouts, you gain in some areas and loose in others.

Why would you need a plugin (WordPress user?) to name an image keyword-phrase.jpg and add alt text Keyword Phrase?

Erm, there are no common phrases, your links anchor text should be specific for the pages you are linking from/to. The anchor text should ideally be related to the SERPs targeted.

David

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IMLab

7 years ago

Thanks for sharing those tips with the community! Here is a quick checklist as well to help the new comers around.

Quick On-Page Optimization Cheat Sheet:

1. Meta Title Optimization.
2. Meta Description Optimization.
3. Proper Use Of H1, H2 and H3 and Tags.
4. Link To Authority Websites.
5. Proper inner-linking between pages.
6. Images Optimization.
7. Video Embedding & Optimization.
8. Speed Optimization.
9. Quality Content.
10. Proper Use Of Infographics.
11. Addition Of Social Media Buttons.
12. Elegant Clean Design.

Hope that helps!

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israrahmed 7 years ago

Great Post i like it

Quick On-Page Optimization Cheat Sheet:

1. Meta Title Optimization.
2. Meta Description Optimization.
3. Proper Use Of H1, H2 and H3 and Tags.
4. Link To Authority Websites.
5. Proper inner-linking between pages.
6. Images Optimization.
7. Video Embedding & Optimization.
8. Speed Optimization.
9. Quality Content.
10. Proper Use Of Infographics.
11. Addition Of Social Media Buttons.
12. Elegant Clean Design
(best sharing IMLab) Thanks
- Thanks
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paulgl

7 years ago

What the frick is "SEO html code"?

Originally Posted by IMLab

Thanks for sharing those tips with the community! Here is a quick checklist as well to help the new comers around.

Quick On-Page Optimization Cheat Sheet:

1. Meta Title Optimization.
2. Meta Description Optimization.
3. Proper Use Of H1, H2 and H3 and Tags.
4. Link To Authority Websites.
5. Proper inner-linking between pages.
6. Images Optimization.
7. Video Embedding & Optimization.
8. Speed Optimization.
9. Quality Content.
10. Proper Use Of Infographics.
11. Addition Of Social Media Buttons.
12. Elegant Clean Design.

Hope that helps!

Meta title is not used in 2014.....when one starts out with crap,
what does one expect to follow? More crap!

Paul

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Kung Fu Backlinks

7 years ago

Great post.

I especially like #1.

Most internet users are so used to clicking a Business Title / Logo to go home, the "home" link is pretty redundant, anyway.

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MikeFriedman

7 years ago

Originally Posted by Kung Fu Backlinks

Great post.

I especially like #1.

Most internet users are so used to clicking a Business Title / Logo to go home, the "home" link is pretty redundant, anyway.

I don't like #1 at all. It is not very user friendly and makes it pretty obvious that you are just trying to rank the homepage for a specific keyword.

A much better approach, that looks much more user friendly, is to use an icon for the home link and use alt text with the keyword you want in it.

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krnekdo

7 years ago

I agree.. This just makes you look too obvious. I always go for user friendly first, search engines second. I want the user to come back because of the great site..

Search engine traffic comes and goes, but direct traffic usually stays

Originally Posted by MikeFriedman

I don't like #1 at all. It is not very user friendly and makes it pretty obvious that you are just trying to rank the homepage for a specific keyword.

A much better approach, that looks much more user friendly, is to use an icon for the home link and use alt text with the keyword you want in it.

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SEO-Dave

7 years ago

Originally Posted by MikeFriedman

I don't like #1 at all. It is not very user friendly and makes it pretty obvious that you are just trying to rank the homepage for a specific keyword.

A much better approach, that looks much more user friendly, is to use an icon for the home link and use alt text with the keyword you want in it.

Depends on the sites layout, with WordPress it doesn't look out of place having a text link in the head area, the vast majority of themes work that way.

Yes, an image link (logo) with the alt text using the home page targeted phrase is as good. A link images alt text is equivalent to a text links anchor text SEO wise.

Note: I wasn't suggesting for a website with a brand like Amazon to link to home with anchor text "Online Shopping". It's for sites where the name of a site covers the home page SERP. If you have a site called "Best SEO Tips" having a home page link with anchor text "Best SEO Tips" works.

Where a site is heavily branded an image link works better.

David

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nik0

Banned 7 years ago

Originally Posted by MikeFriedman

I don't like #1 at all. It is not very user friendly and makes it pretty obvious that you are just trying to rank the homepage for a specific keyword.

A much better approach, that looks much more user friendly, is to use an icon for the home link and use alt text with the keyword you want in it.

I think it can even lead to over optimization when your Home text all of a sudden says: best lawn mowers, very unnatural and depending on the size of the site even dangerous, nothing natural about 100 of the same internal anchor text links to the homepage.

An icon with alt text is a great alternative, though most themes link the header back to the homepage so that would be the first link so it would be even better to edit header.php (in case of using Wordpress) and place your keyword there in the alt tag.

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MikeFriedman

7 years ago

Originally Posted by nik0

I think it can even lead to over optimization when your Home text all of a sudden says: best lawn mowers, very unnatural and depending on the size of the site even dangerous, nothing natural about 100 of the same internal anchor text links to the homepage.

An icon with alt text is a great alternative, though most themes link the header back to the homepage so that would be the first link so it would be even better to edit header.php (in case of using Wordpress) and place your keyword there in the alt tag.

There would be no over optimization. That's silly. How many times do people use category titles in the nav menu? They don't get over optimization penalties for that.

Sites like Target would be way the hell over optimized for things like electronics, toys, shoes...

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nik0

Banned 7 years ago

Originally Posted by MikeFriedman

There would be no over optimization. That's silly. How many times do people use category titles in the nav menu? They don't get over optimization penalties for that.

Sites like Target would be way the hell over optimized for things like electronics, toys, shoes...

On it's own no, in combination with other things it can trigger over optimization penalties faster, eg a backlink profile with exact anchors, keyword over usage on page level, it all adds up.

Especially for new people that still tend to stuff their keyword everywhere they can it might just be the drip that overloads the bucket.

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SEO-Dave

7 years ago

Originally Posted by nik0

On it's own no, in combination with other things it can trigger over optimization penalties faster, eg a backlink profile with exact anchors, keyword over usage on page level, it all adds up.

Especially for new people that still tend to stuff their keyword everywhere they can it might just be the drip that overloads the bucket.

I think you are reading too much into the over optimization concept.

It's one thing acquiring 10,000 backlinks spread over say 500 domains all with the exact same anchor text and having a sitewide internal link with the same anchor text.

It's normal for a sitewide internal link to use the same anchor text, however, it's not natural looking to generate 10,000 backlinks from 500 domains with the exact same keyword rich anchor text.

Webmasters (including most reading this, and me :-)) building links will tend to use a small set of anchor text variations: something like "Keyword Phrase", "Related Keyword Phrase", Keyword about My Phrase"... which will mix things up to some degree, but not as much as you'd see with a completely natural link profile.

I also mix up the anchor text of internal links, for WordPress posts I use a WordPress theme feature that uses 6 anchor text variations through the site significantly reducing the obvious internal anchor text footprint of which phrase I'm targeting.

Means I don't have to be as careful with the link profile from other sources. Basically mix up your anchor text internally so you don't have to be as concerned externally: obviously the best solution is mix all links anchor text like you see with a natural backlink profile.

David

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nik0

Banned 7 years ago

Originally Posted by SEO-Dave

I think you are reading too much into the over optimization concept.

It's one thing acquiring 10,000 backlinks spread over say 500 domains all with the exact same anchor text and having a sitewide internal link with the same anchor text.

It's normal for a sitewide internal link to use the same anchor text, however, it's not natural looking to generate 10,000 backlinks from 500 domains with the exact same keyword rich anchor text.

Webmasters (including most reading this, and me :-)) building links will tend to use a small set of anchor text variations: something like "Keyword Phrase", "Related Keyword Phrase", Keyword about My Phrase"... which will mix things up to some degree, but not as much as you'd see with a completely natural link profile.

I also mix up the anchor text of internal links, for WordPress posts I use a WordPress theme feature that uses 6 anchor text variations through the site significantly reducing the obvious internal anchor text footprint of which phrase I'm targeting.

Means I don't have to be as careful with the link profile from other sources. Basically mix up your anchor text internally so you don't have to be as concerned externally: obviously the best solution is mix all links anchor text like you see with a natural backlink profile.

David

I know there's a huge difference between internal and external but that doesn't mean we should completely ignore it.

Have to admit it's a bit of a thing of the past, where you got huge value for using the same anchor over and over, this seems to be more balanced these days so no need to stuff commercial anchors these days, can even rank very well with zero keyword targeted anchors and only click here, visit site and what not. One of my customers does that and he ranks crazy well. Much better then my own sites where I do focus too much on commercial anchors still.

You do need to be very careful with too many commercial anchors though, can't only make anchors like: red widgets,blue widgets, yellow widgets, cheap widgets, best widgets. Almost just as worse as using the exact same anchor over and over.

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yukon

Banned 7 years ago

One basic thing would crush competition in the SERPs that's following #2 (images).

If your bored there's always hijacking a currently ranked competition image & sending the SERP traffic to another domain.

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accessted

7 years ago

Originally Posted by yukon

One basic thing would crush competition in the SERPs that's following #2 (images).

If your bored there's always hijacking a currently ranked competition image & sending the SERP traffic to another domain.

Is there an app for that?

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godoveryou

7 years ago

Agree with #2 greatly, although there is still a little more left on the table there.

#3 is preferrable in all cases except unless you are running a really tight tight silo, in which case you don't want to dilute tight link-driven content association unless you only link out to content in the same sub-silo. That having been said, the method you described (a more Wikipedia styled model) is what I use in most sites.

#1... can't agree. I understand the technical purpose but it's at the sacrifice of user experience and pretty spammy. That's really a preference though - everything in SEO is a role of the dice anyways.

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SEO-Dave

7 years ago

Originally Posted by godoveryou

Agree with #2 greatly, although there is still a little more left on the table there.

#3 is preferrable in all cases except unless you are running a really tight tight silo, in which case you don't want to dilute tight link-driven content association unless you only link out to content in the same sub-silo. That having been said, the method you described (a more Wikipedia styled model) is what I use in most sites.

#1... can't agree. I understand the technical purpose but it's at the sacrifice of user experience and pretty spammy. That's really a preference though - everything in SEO is a role of the dice anyways.

I was trying to keep the SEO tips simple, so yep the advice can easily be expanded on regarding image SEO and silo SEO.

With #1 on spammy home page anchor text it depends on the site, works well with most of my sites, but I rarely do branding. Would be problematic to have the first link in code for a branded site since you tend to have the brand name as the home page link.

As Mike F touched on there are alternatives like using an image link first, the linked alt text is treated the same as anchor text.

Another solution if your first home page link MUST be non-SEO'd is add a second keyword rich anchor text rich home page link and add an anchor to the link.

If you have an identical link with an anchor (add #something to the URL) like this:

link URL one: example.com/ - anchor text = Home
link URL two: example.com/#something - anchor text = Keyword Phrase

Google will count the anchor text of both links, so rather than only counting Home and ignoring Keyword Phrase, Google counts it all, so like a link with anchor text "Home Keyword Phrase".

Not as good as having the 1st link having anchor text Keyword Phrase, but much better than only having the 1st links anchor text Home and only that anchor text counts.

I use this technique extensively, add an #anchor to most internal links I add manually so if the link is added by WordPress (sidebar link or top menu link for example), Google counts the contextual link for sure**.

**The SEO theme I've developed uses a customized holy grail CSS layout which mean no matter which sidebar layout I use (have 12 layouts) the sidebars and the top navigation menu links code wise are below the main content.

The output in a browser is:

Head (just a text link back to home or image link back to home, this can be turned off)
Search Form
Top Nav Menu links
Left Sidebar
Main content
Right Sidebar
Footer Sidebar
Footer

The code order is:

Head
Main content
Right Sidebar
Left Sidebar
Footer Sidebar
Footer
Top Nav Menu links
Search Form

This is the best SEO HTML output possible, there's no better layout SEO wise, it's mobile responsive as well.

That was a pain to code with 12 different sidebar layouts all using the same HTML output (only the CSS changes, not the HTML output). Benefit of this is SEO wise is internal contextual links added within the content are always the first link code wise, so Google always counts the contextual links anchor text even when a link is repeated in a sidebar etc...

There are few SEO developers with the ability to code the above layout and keep it mobile responsive.

David

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nik0

Banned 7 years ago

Originally Posted by SEO-Dave

The code order is:

Head
Main content
Right Sidebar
Left Sidebar
Footer Sidebar
Footer
Top Nav Menu links
Search Form

Why you put your Top Nav menu links at the bottom?

I want as much juice as possible to flow to my categories so it can spread out evenly among my site so my preference would be:

- Head
- Main content I suppose
- Top Nav menu links
- Sidebar
- Footer

Links like About us / Contact / Tos / Privacy I like to put either in the sidebar or footer of my site btw.

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SEO-Dave

7 years ago

Originally Posted by nik0

Why you put your Top Nav menu links at the bottom?

I want as much juice as possible to flow to my categories so it can spread out evenly among my site so my preference would be:

- Head
- Main content I suppose
- Top Nav menu links
- Sidebar
- Footer

Links like About us / Contact / Tos / Privacy I like to put either in the sidebar or footer of my site btw.

You know the sites in your sig don't have the above HTML code layout? Not many themes have an HTML SEO output.

Code order is important to SEO, links found high in the code pass more anchor text benefit (correlation SEO data supports this view), so by pushing all sitewide links (nav menus etc...) down the code your manually added contextual links are highest in the code.

Go look at my Stallion Theme site (sig), view source of any post and note how after the top home page link and the category links for that post, the next links are the contextual links I've added manually.

So it's

One home page link (can be removed)
One or two category links (these can be moved or removed).
Manually added contextual links.
Tags for the post (I don't use tags, but that would be the order).
Comments links: I never allow author comment links, so the links are internal or I've added them manually myself to comments (have an option to not nofollow comment links I add).
Right sidebar**
footer links (sitewide links).
top nav menu links (sitewide links).

**My right sidebar includes an automated silo SEO links widget which links to other posts in the same categories.

This is as good as it gets for passing anchor text benefit to the most important links from a WordPress post whilst still having links that support other sections of the site, spreading PR etc... Reasonably sure order isn't important in terms of passing PR per se, so only anchor text benefit correlates with code order (Moz has some correlation data on this).

Look at the order of links, home link, categories for that post only, contextual, comments, silo SEO links widget and last are the sitewide footer and nav menu links (sitewide least important in terms of passing anchor text benefit).

In simple terms unique links high in code, sitewide links low in code.

This is perfect SEO for selling links like you do, your clients links gain maximum anchor text benefit as they are high in the code after the home link and specific category links (have an option to move the category links to the bottom of the content as well).

BTW I don't link sitewide to a categories widget. Unless your categories are ALL tightly niched (really tight site niche), having all categories linked sitewide has a negative impact on specific posts. If you have a post about "Best SEO Tips", you don't want links from that webpage to categories with anchor text "Make Money Online". I go with quite advanced silo link structures.

David

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nik0

Banned 7 years ago

Originally Posted by SEO-Dave

You know the sites in your sig don't have the above HTML code layout? Not many themes have an HTML SEO output.

Code order is important to SEO, links found high in the code pass more anchor text benefit (correlation SEO data supports this view), so by pushing all sitewide links (nav menus etc...) down the code your manually added contextual links are highest in the code.

Go look at my Stallion Theme site (sig), view source of any post and note how after the top home page link and the category links for that post, the next links are the contextual links I've added manually.

So it's

One home page link (can be removed)
One or two category links (these can be moved or removed).
Manually added contextual links.
Tags for the post (I don't use tags, but that would be the order).
Comments links: I never allow author comment links, so the links are internal or I've added them manually myself to comments (have an option to not nofollow comment links I add).
Right sidebar**
footer links (sitewide links).
top nav menu links (sitewide links).

**My right sidebar includes an automated silo SEO links widget which links to other posts in the same categories.

This is as good as it gets for passing anchor text benefit to the most important links from a WordPress post whilst still having links that support other sections of the site, spreading PR etc... Reasonably sure order isn't important in terms of passing PR per se, so only anchor text benefit correlates with code order (Moz has some correlation data on this).

Look at the order of links, home link, categories for that post only, contextual, comments, silo SEO links widget and last are the sitewide footer and nav menu links (sitewide least important in terms of passing anchor text benefit).

In simple terms unique links high in code, sitewide links low in code.

This is perfect SEO for selling links like you do, your clients links gain maximum anchor text benefit as they are high in the code after the home link and specific category links (have an option to move the category links to the bottom of the content as well).

BTW I don't link sitewide to a categories widget. Unless your categories are ALL tightly niched (really tight site niche), having all categories linked sitewide has a negative impact on specific posts. If you have a post about "Best SEO Tips", you don't want links from that webpage to categories with anchor text "Make Money Online". I go with quite advanced silo link structures.

David

Sites in my sig's are purely chosen based on design, I haven't SEO'd them really, only that seobacklinkservice domain that I lately bought received a bunch of footer links to see how that would work out, very generic name anchor text used. Worked out great btw.

It's not doable for me to change themes of 600 sites (my network), to pass the most juice though my new sites, the network is being restructured completely and transformed into a niche network where clients receive domains dedicated to them, do have links near the header that link to the most important pages, that contain the link of the client and the other posts link internally to that post to increase strength even more (I don't want only homepage links to client sites, doesn't look to natural so anyway with this new setup most juice will flow to where it should go.

Anyway, once you're theme is adjusted to support a 4 tier silo you have me as a client, with that I mean:

Tier 1: Homepage
Tier 2: Categories
Tier 3: Sub categories (navigation only has links to other sub categories)
Tier 4: Posts (sidebar only shows posts from sub category)

I need something like that for my main authority site that I want to launch some day and perhaps also for some authority sites with the purpose of providing links to clients.

What I'm doing right now is dedication sections to single customers, eg one customer gets his own category with 5 posts. In case I add another customer in the same niche then he also gets his own category with 5 posts but it would be nice to also have some larger sites that focus on broader niches like home & living that gets divided into contractors, interior, decor, and where contractors gets once again divided into roofers, electricians, plumbers and all that properly silo'd.

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SEO-Dave

7 years ago

Originally Posted by nik0

Anyway, once you're theme is adjusted to support a 4 tier silo you have me as a client, with that I mean:

Tier 1: Homepage
Tier 2: Categories
Tier 3: Sub categories (navigation only has links to other sub categories)
Tier 4: Posts (sidebar only shows posts from sub category)

I need something like that for my main authority site that I want to launch some day and perhaps also for some authority sites with the purpose of providing links to clients.

What I'm doing right now is dedication sections to single customers, eg one customer gets his own category with 5 posts. In case I add another customer in the same niche then he also gets his own category with 5 posts but it would be nice to also have some larger sites that focus on broader niches like home & living that gets divided into contractors, interior, decor, and where contractors gets once again divided into roofers, electricians, plumbers and all that properly silo'd.

Always like a silo SEO link challenge, recently built new features which does most of what you want.

If I understand correctly you want a theme to do the following with regards sidebar based links.

Home page automatically links to all categories only, other links added by you manually. So there wouldn't be a popular/recent posts widget etc...

No problem with this.

Categories link to WordPress posts (normal sort of WordPress output). Again no recent/popular posts widgets. Do you want the categories widget loaded on all categories (can set eitherway)?

No problem with this.

Categories link to sub-categories.

Not a current feature. You want a widget that automatically links to the sub-categories under the category loaded, is that only on the categories or the posts as well?

Would make a nice silo feature to only link to sub-categories since SEO wise they should be related.

This looks promising https://wordpress.org/plugins/sub-categories-widget/ done about 10 mins testing and looks like a useful concept, will probably use the concept in my next theme update as that would be useful for adding more automated siloing.

Posts only link to other posts in same or sub-categories, so recent/popular posts in the categories the post is in.

If you want what I think you want, no problem, I use this output on a lot of sites, simply add one widget to either recent or popular posts and set it to only load posts from the same categories the post is in (it's a widget option).

So got most of what you talk about already and looks like the subcategory plugin will provide the one missing feature.

Started a news site recently WWW News with a similar output to what you describe, but simpler: only has one widget on the sidebar.

The Latest News widget is a recent posts widget with options set to only shows posts from the same categories the post is in. Since it's a news site posts are in multiple categories, if a post is in one category the widget will only show the latest posts from that one category, if in 5 categories the latest posts from those 5 categories.

To add the categories widget only on the home page I'd add either the Tagcloud (set to show categories) or Categories widget and set it to only load on the homepage (theme feature: almost all widgets can be set to load sitewide, on one post, one category, all categories and loads of other permutations). Stallion also has a categories widget with icons, but not happy with the addition of so many images when there are a lot of categories (nice idea, but it's a performance hit having a bunch of images load).

To match your requirement to not have the latest posts widget on the home page and on categories I'd set the Latest News Widget to not load on home and archive parts of the site (so would only load on posts).

The result would be what you see now, with a categories widget on the home page only and the latest posts widget only loading on posts.

Only thing missing is categories linking to sub-categories as a widget if I've understood what your 4 tier silo link structure is?.

If you limit all posts to only one category each: like you describe your clients 5 posts per category. The Stallion Theme would automatically link to all 5 posts from the 5 posts.

I'd also set the latest posts widget to load on categories as well, you'd then have the 5 clients posts linked to from each other and links from the categories sidebar as well as you see on the news site. If you put posts in multiple categories different links will load on the sidebar based on what posts are in the same categories as the post you are looking at. Stallion has a keyphrase feature where you set 5 related keyphrases which are used as the anchor text for the silo SEO widget I mentioned above, with the right settings you'll find different anchor text is used when looking at the same widget on home, categories, WordPress posts etc... mixing up the anchor text of internal links.

I've gone all out on silo SEO features and they are very easy to use. I like the subcategory concept, going to have to add it as a feature.

David

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nik0 Banned 7 years ago

Originally Posted by SEO-Dave

Always like a silo SEO link challenge, recently built new features which does most of what you want.

Wow long post gets a bit confusing.

I know there are ways to accomplish it with existing plugins and dynamic widgets and such but that's a lot of puzzling and I like to keep it easy so that VA's can just create sub categories and don't have to mess around with all kind of settings for widgets.

To clarify how I like it, follow me at Amazon, starting at their homepage

1) Select Appliances from the drop down and click go

2) You now see a list of sub categories in the left sidebar, under Appliances like air conditioners, air purifiers and so on, now click on air conditioners

3) Now you see a whole new list of sub categories under air conditoners, and above it links to a different category structure but forget about that, above the list we just want Appliances again to keep it easy for users to navigate back.

Would be nice to go that one layer more deep though not absolutely necessary so this new list of sub categories could just as well be a list of posts as after all when you click on it you get taken to a page with air conditioners, which could just as well be a page with a link of my clients on it, or a review page in case I use it as money site.

Clue is that I don't want to see the other sub categories anywhere on my site when we enter the final category. Only a link to the category above it may be visible and sitewide links to the other main categories are ok as well, would be nice if the links to these other categories show low in the code indeed to not dillute any more juice then needed when we reach this silo section.

Would also be nice that when we enter one of the main categories that we have a page with thumbnails and sub category titles like a 4x3 array in case we have 12 categories, just so that it looks nice and so that people can easily click through.

I don't want the sub categories visible or linkable on the homepage though.

So summarized:

- Sitewide navigation links to main categories

- Homepage - custom pages widget that links to most popular pages
- Category page - links to sub category pages in sidebar or in 4x3 array on page itself
- Sub category page - links only to posts from that sub category in sidebar

Doesn't look that complicated indeed.

Extra tier of sub sub category would be nice though.
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yukon

Banned 7 years ago

For those following along at home, never use latest post If you care about the links. Worst idea ever when talking about a silo.

Static links is what's needed, not latest post links rolling off pages which will constantly change on-page SEO & constantly fudging up SERP positions.

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TotalWebsiteControl

7 years ago

Originally Posted by yukon

For those following along at home, never use latest post If you care about the links. Worst idea ever when talking about a silo.

Static links is what's needed, not latest post links rolling off pages which will constantly change on-page SEO & constantly fudging up SERP positions.

Yes yukon but everybody knows this....

or do they?

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SEO-Dave

7 years ago

Originally Posted by yukon

For those following along at home, never use latest post If you care about the links. Worst idea ever when talking about a silo.

Static links is what's needed, not latest post links rolling off pages which will constantly change on-page SEO & constantly fudging up SERP positions.

Erm, that depends on the site, if it's part of a network like Nic0 works with there won't be that many new WordPress posts added to a particular site in 2 years, there could be no roll off IF the settings are right.

Yes, the best silo link structure would be ALL links on a webpage would be manually added, but that is not how most webmasters work or more importantly want to work. Who has the time with dozens of WordPress sites in a network to manually build all internal links, one link at a time? You add a new post and have to manually find all the related webpages to link to and link from: to do it right you could be editing a dozen WordPress posts every time you publish one.

Who seriously does that in 2014??? I've tried it that way and with a network of over 100 WordPress sites you never have the time to link all the related pages together.

Most webmasters want as much SEO as possible automatically done.

They add recent posts widgets and popular posts widgets and related posts widgets because they automatically link to some posts.

I agree a sitewide recent/latest post widget as you find with most themes is not a good idea if silo SEO is important to your strategy, the links aren't long term and they won't all match every silo within the site.

This is not what I described, I don't add a sitewide recent or popular posts widget that shows the same links sitewide. The recent/popular posts are only taken from the category the post is in.

If a post is in a category about Dogs Toys, the widget will only link to other posts from the Dogs Toys category with no manual input from the website owner, all automated. So a recent/popular Dogs Toys widget.

Is this as good as manually modifying all WordPress posts related to a new post and only adding links to/from those?

No it isn't (manual tends to be better, but significantly more effort), but it's an automated way to link related content together and because the links pool is limited by category, the links roll off is significantly lower than a standard recent/popular posts widget and the anchor text is related to the individual posts as long as categories are themed.

Oh and the silo SEO widget I use has 11 ways to choose which posts to load: latest, oldest, popular, least popular, recently modified, oldest modified, by Post ID A-Z, by Post ID Z-A, by title A-Z, by title Z-A and random. Some of those (oldest and by Post ID A-Z) result in links that never roll off, so can be static links.

Yukon, you might be stuck in 1999 with static HTML webpages, most of the world have moved on and use WordPress and similar CMS solutions, you know those Web 2.0 sites the youngsters talk about. Webmasters want automation in their SEO and what I do is as good as it gets.

Nothing against old people, but when I read Yukon's comments I see an OAP sitting at a grubby old 486 computer, he's slumped in a comfy chair with a multicoloured crochet blanket over his legs in his slippers cursing at how slow the dial-up is :-) Do you still use Frontpage for creating websites Yukon???

David

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nik0

Banned 7 years ago

Originally Posted by yukon

For those following along at home, never use latest post If you care about the links. Worst idea ever when talking about a silo.

Static links is what's needed, not latest post links rolling off pages which will constantly change on-page SEO & constantly fudging up SERP positions.

Dave summed it up pretty much, when it's for a network each client receives 5 posts and it stays like that, the next customer gets its own net category on the site so it's static already from that point of view.

As for money site, well I don't plan to review endless lists of the same products, maybe 10 in each category and that's it. When a new model comes out I most likely replace an existing review so once again it would be somewhat static.

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godoveryou

7 years ago

Just a moment here Dave. You wouldn't need to manually add the links to all the posts on the homepage. You can do that with a variety of plugins if you're lazy...

As to who does it - I do on a few directory styled sites where the user already knows what the domain is and what they are looking for.

A site with weaker brand recognition may not be able to pull that off though.

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