Directory Structure?

Marketing
1

I am building a website that will be content heavy, similar to a newspaper.

Still getting the basics of HTML, CSS and a little PHP under my belt. So SEO is the farthest thing from my mind right now, however, I do want to do some preliminary thinking in that area!

What would be the best way to organize my website as far as directory structure and URL goes when it comes to SEO?

Here is a URL to a mock-up website that will sorta look like what I’m working on…

Debbie’s Test Site

My plan is to have a “Category Landing Page” for each main menu item (e.g. “Business landing page”, “Weather landing page”, etc). Each sub-menu item might go directly to an end page (e.g. Business>>Job Listings.html) or it might go to another landing page (e.g. Sports>>NFL landing page).

Some Questions:

1.) As long as it makes sense in the real world, does how I have my website organized really matter to SEO?

Because my website will be like a newspaper, articles and content will pretty easily fall into a nature physical order (e.g. “Thunderstorms in forecast” goes under “Weather”, and “Girls lose in overtime!” goes under “Sports”!).

2.) Is building my URL’s as simple as following the path where I have things logically organized, e.g.

Business>>Small Business>>Taxes>>How to leverage 2010’s new Tax Laws.html

Sports>>NCAAF>>Pac-10>>Arizona State Univ>>Recruiting>>5-Star Quarterback visits Tempe.html

3.) How should I name end pages?

Do I just use the article heading (e.g. “How to Deal with Employees from Hell.html”)?

Do I use some cryptic string (e.g. “9703291634.html”)?

Something else?

Thanks,

Debbie

2

Hi Debbie,

Have you done some keyword research?

Before setting up your site structure is is essential to know what the major keywords are for the site. You will end up with a few major keywords and a lot of secondary keywords. Look at the results of your keyword research and then base the category structure on that. This is important for SEO.

Always use your keywords for a particular article in the page’s title. You can have the same heading as the page title but you can also decide to make the title more keywords rich. For Wordpress 2 good plugins to do that are All in one SEO and my favorite is Wordpress SEO by Yoast.

Good luck!

3

About your first question. I would say you must choose one category for each page and than create sub-pages for sub section of each category. I understand that your website would like a news website but still you will need to organize them in a way that each type of content would stay on each page. This way, individual page would rank too with the main page of your website.

I have answered your second question already. Yes, you must arrange them this way Business>>Small Business>>Taxes>>How to leverage 2010’s new Tax Laws.html . This way, your pages would be interlinked and at the same would maintain individual ranking.

About your third question, It is always recommended to name pages with heading as it would contain your keyword.