• Some Dos and Don’ts When Inter-Linking Pages On Your Site •
• Keep It Easy For Your Visitor •

As far as basic SEO steps are concerned, it is important to provide good HTML linking to help your website rank higher in the search engines. In addition, the HTML links (called ‘hyperlinks’ because when you click on the link it takes you to another page) between all your website’s pages should also be thought of as a user-friendly, ease-of-navigation issue.

What do I mean by this? Well, let me use a real life example from a website that I am currently hired to not only search engine optimize, but to also rearrange so that the site visitors can more easily navigate their way around.

I’ll share this example: the site owner emails a very nice, content rich newsletter to her list each month. She also smartly utilizes each newsletter as a new page of content for her website. So, we can all agree that this would mean that she places twelve new, keyword focused web pages on her site every year.

In the simplest form of navigation hierarchy, it would make the most sense to have a navigation button (this is an HTML linking example) that would link us to a second-tier page where she could list out each month’s newsletter with a brief overview of what the subject was. These hyperlinks would take the visitor to the actual month’s newsletter.  The newsletters would site on what would be the third-tier.

Here’s an example of the newsletter links she could have on the second-tier page:

January 2008: Aromatherapy Using Rosemary  The herb rosemary helps bring clarity of mind. Learn how to use it when defining your New Year’s intentions.

February 2008: Aromatherapy Using The Essence of Rose  Yes, this is the month of love! Learn all about the scent of Rose and why it’s used for love and romantic intentions!

Each month’s newsletter would be hyperlinked in this fashion. Each newsletter would be sitting on its own web page. Each page’s file name would be keyword optimized such as the file name for January could be:
        www.nameofsite.com/january2008-aromatherapy-rosemary.html
        www.nameofsite.com/february2008-aromatherapy-rose.html

Unfortunately, This Is Not The HTML Linking Structure Currently In Use

My client has made a big mistake by linking her newsletters in the following way:

•  She has not provided a landing page from the navigational HTML link to a second-tier page as I have mentioned;

•  Her HTML linking structure for all the newsletters consist of one link at the bottom of each newsletter, stating “click here for last month’s newsletter”;

•  And worse yet … it isn’t the current month’s newsletter that is accessed when you click on her “Newsletter” navigation button, no! It is the oldest newsletter.

Can you understand how clumsy and aggravating this is to someone who wants to access her most current newsletter to see what she’s wriring about this month? Or to someone who wants to see a nice overview of all her newsletters because they wish to reference back to one they had read months before?

You need to think out the HTML linking you’ll use on your site. Not only is it advantageous for SEO ranking purposes to have all your website pages inter-linked, but it is also most important to have a very carefully thought out, easy-to-navigate website for your visitors.

Make your HTML linking structure simple, clearly defined and easy for your visitor to figure out ‘where to go next’. This is but one more way to you can encourage your visitors to stay on your site for a longer period of time. And the longer they stay, the more option you have to make them aware of your products or services!

• Choosing A Marketing Niche Without Keyword Research Is A Huge Mistake •
• You’ve Got To Understand Traffic Volumes and Actual Search Terms Being Used •

Here’s a situation that is all too common with newcomers to the internet marketing world. But in this instance, the question is being asked by an individual that claims to have a web development business. I don’t know about you, but if I had hired this company to help develop my website’s online presence, and I became aware that the owner was asking a question like this one, well his company wouldn’t be involved with my website anymore!

I am digressing here … back to the subject at hand. Here is a very common situation that arises AFTER a new internet marketer jumps on the band wagon. Let me share the gist of what this individual was asking about: 

Hi: I am new to the affiliate marketing business. I presently own and operate a small web development company. We recently developed a website targeted to people who are interested in and/or related to all areas relating to dogs. They could be dog owners, breeders, groomers, trainers, etc.  

Here is my question: Is ‘dogs’ a good niche?

 

Is ‘Dogs’ A Good Niche?

Sigh … OK, so this individual has already purchased a domain name; has started to build out a site around the HUGE category of dogs; has probably taken time to write content; taken time to place the content and other information onto this new site … but he’s asking NOW “is ‘dogs’ a good niche”??

Did he put the cart before the horse? Yes, most definitely. My suggestion to him was to STOP what they were doing right now and do some keyword research using a tool like Wordtracker.

I told him that the niche of dogs was huge! (‘Dogs’ is not what you’d call a niche. Poodles would be a niche, or puppy training would be a niche.) I advised ‘dogs’ was way too broad for them to achieve any online marketing success. That they needed to narrow it down!

I told him I’d make a 200% wager that they hadn’t done any keyword research, based on the question. I told him if they expected to attract targeted traffic, then keyword research was a must.

In addition, I advised that not only would the keyword research help them discover smaller niches within the broad category of dogs, they’d also get a grasp on what people were REALLY typing into the search engines to find out information about dogs.

If you know what people are searching for, then you’ll know what content topics to write about in order to try and grab some of that traffic via your organic search engine rankings!

As an example of what I am talking about, I entered ‘dogs’ into Wordtracker, set it to give me the top 100 results, and here’s an example of those results for today.

Here’s the top ten (actual term being used with projected 24 hour searches made in the USA):

1.  dogs    36,052
2.  dogsrule.com   7,241
3.  who let the dogs out   1,417
4.  funny dogs   1,130
5.  dogs for sale   1,058
6.  hot dogs   831
7.  cute dogs   798
8.  boxer dogs   753
9.  small dogs   693
10.  mummy dogs   622

All the way down to:

93.   herbs for dogs   123
94.   teacup dogs    122
95.   seizures in dogs   120
96.   english bull dogs   120; and lastly …
100.  havanese dogs   115

So, the moral of this story is to do your keyword research before you even purchase a domain name! You have to know the niche(s) you will be targeting within the broad category you’ve chosen.

Plus, you must get an idea of what people are searching for!  If you build out a website that contains information that only 2 people a day are interested in, it’s going to be terribly difficult to make any money as an online marketer! 

• My Client’s Site Uses An Image For The Entire Navigation Bar •
• Let’s Understand Why This Is An SEO No-No •

Dear oh dear.  I am currently working with a client who wants to gain a stronger online presence and to begin to get top organic rankings. As it normally is with the clients who engage my professional SEO services, her site is invisible in the SERPs.

The web designer she hired to design what is visually a very attractive site, did the search engine optimization for her.  Let’s just say that his SEO blunders are a great post for another day!

I’d like to touch upon one SEO mistake that is adversely affecting her website, and affects many other unsuspecting people’s sites.  It’s the issue of her navigation bar and navigation links. It’s an image! A big no-no for SEO purposes.

The spiders have nothing to follow with her current image linking structure.  Yes, the use of alt attributes can be used to get around a situation like this. It’s not a best-case way to solve it, but if you assign your keyword rich information into the alt attributes for each image being used for a clickable link, the spiders will then understand what is going on.

But my client’s problem cannot be improved via the fix I just mentioned.

Her entire navigation bar (which includes 16 links) is one image!  There is a pretty background with sixteen words superimposed upon the image. I am not an html coding expert by any means, but when I looked at the coding that makes that image clickable for those sixteen unique “links” … well I scratched my head in amazement!  I guess I could say it was very “creative”! lol 

The coding to make each of the sixteen words “work” as clickable links is set up in the most archaic formatting. It’s just plain bad. Obviously that “web designer” my client had hired wasn’t very adept at clean, SEO friendly coding.

My recommendation will be for her to utilize a CSS menu (I’d like to see her whole website recoded using a CSS format). For a short term fix, I’ll advise her to get rid of the entire image and use a table structure.

Navigation links need to be crawlable by the spiders. As do all the other links on your pages. Take a look at your website. Are you utilizing images in ways that can hinder the search engines from crawling your website ?