A proper structure is an important part if you want to successfully make a website. You might have great content but that isn't enough. Your content also has to be easily navigable, this is true for both human visitors and search engine bot alike.
Hence, it is important to think about both your hierarchy and organization before you get start to make a website. Otherwise you may have to go back and reorganize a lot of content, which is no fun. This may also adversely effect your search engine ranking, so take the time to plan thoroughly.
When you make a website, the visual layout should be split into a content area and a sidebar with navigational links. You can also try a top (horizontal) navigation, and the sidebar can be floating to the left or right, but many of your less Internet savvy visitors will respond better to a sidebar on the left. Think about who you are making this website for and decide accordingly. After all, your content and design decisions should be there to please your visitors and not to boost your ego. If your visitors are older or less Internet savvy, make sure not to go overboard on graphics and gimmicks. Less is more.
By all means, don't make your navigation too complicated! If people are not able to figure out how to navigate your site, or if your site does not display properly in a variety of browsers, you are just hurting your business and loosing visitors. But that's what you want to make a website for!
Your sidebar should contain a link to your homepage, as well as links to your second tier content pages (see below). You will probably also want to link to your "contact" page, possibly a site map, and "about" page and similar.
When you make a website, think of your site as several tiers deep with content. The first tier is your homepage. This is practically the front door that many human and bot visitors will enter through. All of your pages, and in particular your homepage, need to give your visitors an instant impression of what your site is about.
If you make a website about Siamese cats, you will want to say on your homepage something about why your website is the greatest of its kind on the web, what you have to offer and where people should go from here (namely, browse your website). Remember, your visitors will instantly hit the back button if they are not able to tell within the first couple of seconds what your site is about.
Now comes the second tier content. All of your tier-two content pages should split your main topic (we are going with Siamese cats for this article) into logical sub-categories, for example: Siamese Cat Breed Facts, Siamese Health Problems, Book Reviews, Siamese Photo Gallery etc.
If you have read my other articles, you will know how important niche and keyword research is. Make sure to keep researching the keywords that you are going to target per page.
Now, these tier-two pages should each link to further sub-pages with tightly targeted content. This is tier three.
For example: Your tier-two page "Siamese Cat Breed Facts" gives a general overview targeted to this topic. Furthermore, this page contains links to your sub-pages "Siamese Breed History", "Is the Siamese the Right Breed for You?", "Siamese Cat Breed Standard", "Temperament", "Appearance", etc.
See how your pages become topically more and more granular the further we dive into your website? When we came through the front door (the homepage), the topic was "Siamese Cats". Then we clicked on "Siamese Cat Breed Facts" and went from there to "Is the Siamese the Right Breed for You?".
Giving your website a proper hierarchy will both help your human visitors navigate and allow search engines to index and rank your website a lot easier.
If you are running your site on WordPress, there are two possibilities for you to easily structure your site like this:
Option 1: Use categories. These categories will become your tier-two pages. Make sure to fill out the category descriptions to give your tier-two pages some content. Categories will automatically display any posts therein.
Using this method may require you to make modifications to your theme templates. For one, the posts that you publish in each respective category will show in many themes in full. This is not a good idea. Instead you will want to only show an excerpt or even a just a link to your tier-three posts.
Second, many themes don't display the category description. That means, your tier-two pages would practically be empty. In this case, place a php tag with "echo category_description();" in your theme's category.php template file.
Option 2: Use pages. In WordPress, pages are not tagged or assigned to categories as posts are. They are treated as two completely different types of content in the WordPress backend. Giving your pages a hierarchy is very easy.
In fact, you can simply select a parent page from the corresponding menu under "Attributes". This will make it easy for you to keep the overview on your page structure. Make sure to link from your tier-two pages to the tier-three ones like you normally would.
No matter which option you choose, there should be a widget available for you to automatically add your tier-two pages to your sidebar navigation. This can be either the "Pages" or "Categories" widget from the Appearance menu, or a similar widget. WordPress is extremely flexible and developer friendly, make sure to search the available plugins for a fitting one.
Hence, it is important to think about both your hierarchy and organization before you get start to make a website. Otherwise you may have to go back and reorganize a lot of content, which is no fun. This may also adversely effect your search engine ranking, so take the time to plan thoroughly.
When you make a website, the visual layout should be split into a content area and a sidebar with navigational links. You can also try a top (horizontal) navigation, and the sidebar can be floating to the left or right, but many of your less Internet savvy visitors will respond better to a sidebar on the left. Think about who you are making this website for and decide accordingly. After all, your content and design decisions should be there to please your visitors and not to boost your ego. If your visitors are older or less Internet savvy, make sure not to go overboard on graphics and gimmicks. Less is more.
By all means, don't make your navigation too complicated! If people are not able to figure out how to navigate your site, or if your site does not display properly in a variety of browsers, you are just hurting your business and loosing visitors. But that's what you want to make a website for!
Your sidebar should contain a link to your homepage, as well as links to your second tier content pages (see below). You will probably also want to link to your "contact" page, possibly a site map, and "about" page and similar.
When you make a website, think of your site as several tiers deep with content. The first tier is your homepage. This is practically the front door that many human and bot visitors will enter through. All of your pages, and in particular your homepage, need to give your visitors an instant impression of what your site is about.
If you make a website about Siamese cats, you will want to say on your homepage something about why your website is the greatest of its kind on the web, what you have to offer and where people should go from here (namely, browse your website). Remember, your visitors will instantly hit the back button if they are not able to tell within the first couple of seconds what your site is about.
Now comes the second tier content. All of your tier-two content pages should split your main topic (we are going with Siamese cats for this article) into logical sub-categories, for example: Siamese Cat Breed Facts, Siamese Health Problems, Book Reviews, Siamese Photo Gallery etc.
If you have read my other articles, you will know how important niche and keyword research is. Make sure to keep researching the keywords that you are going to target per page.
Now, these tier-two pages should each link to further sub-pages with tightly targeted content. This is tier three.
For example: Your tier-two page "Siamese Cat Breed Facts" gives a general overview targeted to this topic. Furthermore, this page contains links to your sub-pages "Siamese Breed History", "Is the Siamese the Right Breed for You?", "Siamese Cat Breed Standard", "Temperament", "Appearance", etc.
See how your pages become topically more and more granular the further we dive into your website? When we came through the front door (the homepage), the topic was "Siamese Cats". Then we clicked on "Siamese Cat Breed Facts" and went from there to "Is the Siamese the Right Breed for You?".
Giving your website a proper hierarchy will both help your human visitors navigate and allow search engines to index and rank your website a lot easier.
If you are running your site on WordPress, there are two possibilities for you to easily structure your site like this:
Option 1: Use categories. These categories will become your tier-two pages. Make sure to fill out the category descriptions to give your tier-two pages some content. Categories will automatically display any posts therein.
Using this method may require you to make modifications to your theme templates. For one, the posts that you publish in each respective category will show in many themes in full. This is not a good idea. Instead you will want to only show an excerpt or even a just a link to your tier-three posts.
Second, many themes don't display the category description. That means, your tier-two pages would practically be empty. In this case, place a php tag with "echo category_description();" in your theme's category.php template file.
Option 2: Use pages. In WordPress, pages are not tagged or assigned to categories as posts are. They are treated as two completely different types of content in the WordPress backend. Giving your pages a hierarchy is very easy.
In fact, you can simply select a parent page from the corresponding menu under "Attributes". This will make it easy for you to keep the overview on your page structure. Make sure to link from your tier-two pages to the tier-three ones like you normally would.
No matter which option you choose, there should be a widget available for you to automatically add your tier-two pages to your sidebar navigation. This can be either the "Pages" or "Categories" widget from the Appearance menu, or a similar widget. WordPress is extremely flexible and developer friendly, make sure to search the available plugins for a fitting one.
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