When you’re optimizing your site for the search engines, little SEO techniques matter just as much as the major techniques. One good example of a simple technique that can work wonders for your PageRank and search engine rankings is the use of a consistent link structure for all of the pages on your site. If you had your site designed by someone who is not an SEO expert, or you designed it yourself, it may be suffering from inconsistent link structure. When you link from one page on your site to another page on your site, the search engines follow those links, which can help to get your pages indexed and improve your overall rankings. However, you need to be careful that your links to a page are always structured in the same way. If you have two or more link structures leading to the same page on your site, the search engine spiders actually read them as links to different pages. This can have an impact on how well your site is ranked and how many people are exposed to your marketing message. Here’s an example of inconsistent link structure:
Sally has a Web site about soy candles, and wants to create links to the page for her soy candle products. On some pages, her link is to http://www.candles.com/soy-candle-products.html. One other pages, her links point to http://candles.com/soy-candle-products. These are two different links, and the search engine spiders will read them accordingly. Sally should pick one of those links and make sure every page of her site uses the same format to point to the page for soy candle products.
How can you avoid this mistake? If you don’t have a Web site yet, have one designed by a company with design and SEO experts available. These experts can work together to ensure that your site design is eye-catching and visually appealing, while an SEO expert can guide the designer in creating a site that will be ideal for SEO purposes. Taz Solutions has both Web designers and graphic designers on staff, and we can help you build an SEO-friendly Web site from scratch or from an existing site.
