Categories
Most sites do not usually have more than about a half dozen major categories. Just how I gave the example of a theme pyramid earlier, your site should be broken down from the broadest topic on the home page to covering more niche topics as you work your way through the site. You can break the site structure down into categories:
• Product or service type
• Problems you solve
• Types of people who have the problems you help solve
Search algorithms rely heavily on internal linking structures to determine the importance of documents on your site. The pages that you link to most frequently are the pages you are telling search engines are your most important pages. On your home page, you may want to strongly feature your categories in a manner that helps prospects self-select their path through your site. Each category and sub category should have local navigation that helps to support its structure.
If you have areas where one category or choice could offend others in that same basket (for instance, gay dating and an option for a group of people who traditionally hate gay people), then you should not show the options that might offend one group to the other. If you are trying to get your brand known, you may also want to consider creating multiple brands if the friction between consumer sets is too great. It is impossible for one site to appeal to everyone.
Anchor Text
When linking between your documents, you should use the words for which you want to rank well in the anchor text. If you cannot use descriptive anchor text, some search engines may still place some weighting on link titles (although not as much as anchor text).
You also can make up for slightly under-descriptive site navigation links by providing descriptive footer text link navigation. A large criteria in search engine rankings is the text used to link to a document. Sometimes it is hard to control how others link to you, but you can always do a good job of providing great links to yourself using internal site linking.
Use Descriptive Anchor Text
When possible, you want to refer to your documents using words similar to those expressed in the title. Let’s say I have a page about 5 HTP that is linking to a page about the history of 5 HTP. I would not use the word history to create the link. I would use the phrase 5 HTP history or history of 5 HTP in the link as it would help the relevancy of both pages.
Click Here
Sometimes it is necessary to use a “click here” link, but most times you can get around it. You cannot always write a link that helps the relevancy of the page that it’s on, but almost always you can write a good descriptive link that contains a keyword or keyword phrase that will help the page the link is pointing at. Having a few click here links scattered throughout your site may make your linkage profile look more natural, but most of your links should describe what is on the other end of the link.
Images as Links
I believe it is usually better to use text as links than images, but if you use an image ensure you place a descriptive image alt tag on it. If you use image navigation links, it is advisable to place descriptive text links at the bottom of the page to help search engines figure out the relevancy of your pages.
Linking to Page Anchors
On longer pages you can use text to link within the same document. Frequently, FAQ pages have links at the top of the page that link to the answers of the associated questions. You then place the anchor you are linking to somewhere else on that same page.
Broken Links in Your Site Many
directory editors and site visitors will quickly grow disinterested with your site if it is full of broken links. Some directory editors will run a link checker on your site in the background while they review the content.
The Internet is dynamic and ever-changing, and some of your links may break from month to month. I recommend checking your site for broken links before submitting it to any of the major directories. Xenu Link Sleuth is a free downloadable link-checking program that alerts you to broken links and can even help you quickly build a site map. I try to look through my site for broken links at least once every few months.
When Broken Links are OK
A good thing about the blog format of this site is that I do not need to go back and fix broken links as they fall into the archives. If your site is a clearly dated news site then you do not need to go back to edit all of your links as sites around the web change.
Broken Links as a Signal of Low Quality
If most of the links on your site are broken or link to spammy sites, then search engines may place less authority on your documents full of broken links. If most of the links are broken, then how well can they trust the current page content? A document that links to bad neighborhoods or non existing pages probably offers outdated advice.
Dangling Nodes
Most, if not all, of your pages should be linked to from other pages and link to other pages on your site. If a page does not link to other pages, then it prevents search engine spiders from being able to use that page’s link authority to help get other pages indexed.
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