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Site Structure for SEO

by Steve Tuggle
8 replies
  • SEO
    • |
What is the best site structure for a relatively large site (1000) pages? I've heard you shouldn't go with any tier 4 pages. So I was wondering if there is a maximum number of tier 2 and 3 pages for SEO.

Thanks,
Steve
#site #structure
  • Profile picture of the author Easy Cash
    Yes - apparently it is 3 tiers max.

    Also - stucture it so that all relevant pages and in their own directories and only relevant linking in between.
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  • Profile picture of the author naonline
    Link back from the lower tiers to the higher tiers and add the 'nofollow' tag to your outbound links (to other sites).

    Apparently

    Nick
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  • Profile picture of the author IowaGal
    Hi Steve -
    A 1,000 page site seems like quite a bit of content. My first question (if you were a client) would be: Is this all on one theme/topic? If not, you might want to consider breaking it apart a bit into smaller sections. Adding some subdomains to break out the topics.

    But in answer to your question you don't want to go any more than three tiers.
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    Techy Bigmouth at http://KristineWirth.com who loves coffee. Feel free to send me some.
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    • Profile picture of the author Steve Tuggle
      Originally Posted by IowaGal View Post

      Hi Steve -
      A 1,000 page site seems like quite a bit of content. My first question (if you were a client) would be: Is this all on one theme/topic? If not, you might want to consider breaking it apart a bit into smaller sections. Adding some subdomains to break out the topics.

      But in answer to your question you don't want to go any more than three tiers.
      Thanks. Yes, it is on one topic. I could break it up into smaller sections. From an SEO standpoint what is best: 1 site w/ 1000 pages; 2 sites w/500 pages each; or 3 sites w/333 pages?

      Also, is there an optimum number of Tier 2 links on a homepage?

      Thanks for any input on this.

      Steve
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      • Profile picture of the author IowaGal
        Originally Posted by rootdoc View Post

        Thanks. Yes, it is on one topic. I could break it up into smaller sections. From an SEO standpoint what is best: 1 site w/ 1000 pages; 2 sites w/500 pages each; or 3 sites w/333 pages?

        Also, is there an optimum number of Tier 2 links on a homepage?

        Thanks for any input on this.

        Steve
        Here's what I would advise you to do. First, determine if all of these 1,000 plus pages are already indexed in the search engines. If they are, you can still place them in subdomains but it will require quite a bit of work, using redirects and such to maintain their current search engine status.

        If on the other hand, you have hundreds of pages that have yet to be indexed, including any new pages you'd create, you could place these into different subdomains to help section the site out.

        bluewidgets.yoursite.com
        redwidgets.yoursite.com
        greenwidgets.yoursite.com

        In answer to your second question about the optimum number of Tier 2 links especially coming from one page, I'd keep these to under 100. This is Google's official stance; no more than 100 links on any one page.

        One of the reasons for keeping a site at no more than 2 or three tiers is that it makes the site difficult for the search engines to navigate. Additionally it's been shown that people generally don't want to click any more than once or twice to get to where they want to go.

        And lastly in response to breaking out the site into 2 sites/500 pages, 3 sites, 333 pages, etc. if you were a client, I wouldn't give a simple answer to this.

        A large site such as yours will in fact have separate sub-topics all related to the overall main topic of the website. It's these subtopics that you'd break out into separate subdomains and depending upon how many subtopics there are would then determine how many subdomains as well as how many pages there would be that would reside within those subdomains.
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        Techy Bigmouth at http://KristineWirth.com who loves coffee. Feel free to send me some.
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        • Profile picture of the author Steve Tuggle
          IowaGal,
          Thanks for a ton of helpful info. For some reason I can't access your website with the computer I'm using. I'll try later from my computer. I really appreciate you taking the time to give such a detailed explanation.
          Steve
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          • Profile picture of the author IowaGal
            No problem - glad I could help.

            I was able to access the site myself...will have others try themselves and see if they can't re-create the glitch.
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            Techy Bigmouth at http://KristineWirth.com who loves coffee. Feel free to send me some.
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            • Profile picture of the author Steve Tuggle
              Made it to your site. It was the computer I was using earlier.
              Thanks again
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