aaron dalrymple dot com

Site Architecture

Page layout
Generally, simple is better (we’ll talk more specifically about navigation in step 7). I generally like to keep the tables simple, use text links wherever possible (text links along with style sheets can be used to make pages that look good as well as give us the linking text and search engine friendliness that we a’re looking for). We want to be sure that we use our keywords toward the top of the coded page. So if we have a page with a left-hand navigation bar, we need to make sure that navigation table cell has keywords in the very top.
Directory Structure and page names
Whenever possible we want to put all of our important pages in the root directory of our domain. This communicates to the search engines that they are important pages and there is some evidence that the further down in the directory tree a page is, the less important the Search Engines will deem it to be.Using your keywords in your directory and page names (within reason) seem to be of little importance to the engines. However, doing this, again, within reason, doesn’t seem to hurt and may marginally help in rankings.
URLs
One thing to remember when choosing a domain name is that all domain suffixes (.com, .net, .us, etc.) are viewed equal by the search engines. So don’t be afraid to grab one of those other top-level-domains to use for SEO. However, be aware of how it looks to the customer. You may be able to get keyword.tv,– but that may send up a red-flag to the consumer that is used to seeing commercial sites with a .com.A quick search in Google for a term like “Caribbean Travel” will reveal that Google is paying attention to the keywords in your domain. In fact, a recent Planet Ocean study revealed a 100% correlation between keyword domains and top rankings in Yahoo! and a 64% correlation in Google. So, go after domains that contain your best keywords if possible.

Another advantage of having keywords in your domains is that it makes incoming links that contain those keywords much more “natural.” We’ll talk more about link building in a step 9.

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