One of the problems that website owners and bloggers encounter on a regular basis is coming up with ideas for posts. One of the tactics that I like to employ is creating a regular ongoing post series.

So let’s tackle the big questions first: what’s an example of post series? How about “Sandwich Mondays” from NPR. The basic premise is every monday they publish a post about sandwhiches. Sometimes these are reviews as in the case of the Denny’s Fried Cheese post. Sometimes there’s a travel/tourism theme as in the case of the Pop Tarts Restaurant in Times Square. Other times it could be a flashback pop-culture reference like the Pixy Stix and Cap’n Crunch Cereal sandwich from The Breakfast Club.

Click here to view the embedded video.

You can take this concept and use it on lots of different sites. For example, on a real estate blog, how about writing an in depth post about a school district in a neighborhood you work. On a clothing site do a series that features, each week, one pair of fashionable shoes under $25. This is a pretty easy concept to run with. All it takes a little imagination.

To get the most out of this approach you should try using an editorial calendar. Now this doesn’t mean you have to eat a sandwich every Monday. You can get 3-4 weeks or more ahead of yourself and schedule the posts in advance. You can also have multiple series. In the example of the real estate website, maybe you’ll also have a series about local libraries and programs they offer. If you keep each of the posts narrowly focused, you can tie it all together with the head and tail content approach. These types of posts are something that will benefit from having a bit of personality and opinion to them because it’s what makes them interesting. Additionally, the more opinion you use, the less you are going to be able to outsource. Lastly use tags and maximize internal anchor text to  get the most SEO value, silo your content, and better target your ads.

What are the takeaways here:

• Choose 1-3 series of weekly, biweekly, or monthly posts
• Use an editorial calendar to help you plan and publish your content
• Keep each of the posts narrow and focused
• Interlink the series with other series using the “head and tail” concept
• Maximize your internal anchor text by interlinking to other related posts
• Tag your posts to help you serve the most effective advertisements

photo credit: adactio

This post originally came from Michael Gray who is an SEO Consultant. Be sure not to miss the Thesis WordPress Theme review.

Content Ideas – Creating an Ongoing Series

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Go to Source

One of the questions that often comes up is does Google hate affiliate websites, and are they penalized in the algorithm?

The answer to that is slightly nuanced but, for simplicity’s sake, they don’t hate affiliate websites. Nor have I seen any evidence that shows affiliate sites are penalized. What Google does hate is thin affiliate websites with little or no trust. However, a better question to ask is can Google detect affiliate websites, and can they make it harder  for affiliate websites to rank … ? But those are entirely different questions.

If you’ve read the leaked quality rater guide from 2009, you’ll see that Google has set up lot of hurdles specifically making it harder for affiliate websites to “pass” the sniff test. One of the quickest and easiest ways that Google can determine an affiliate website is through “naked” links to common affiliate programs like Linkshare, CJ, ShareASale, and others. But, really, how good can Google be at detecting those links? Well, here’s a publicly available free tool put out by Sitonomy that checks what types of programming tools are being used by a website.

Now if the folks at Sitonomy can detect that 4% of the links on a page are from CJ, I’m positive that Google can as well. I’m sure Google can tell on page level throughout the site and the site as a whole. I’m also quite sure Google has an idea at what point, whether by percentage or by total number of links, that a site becomes an affiliate website. It would also be fairly easy to say, once you cross that threshold, you need a higher level of trust to rank for competitive terms. This is one of the reasons I strongly disagree with Lori Weiman, who says affiliates should never cloak links.

So what are the takeaways here:

• Use a tool like Sitonomy to check your most important pages and see what they are able to find as far as affiliate links
• Look into redirection tools that mask your links, and make sure you block them from search engine spiders
• Obfuscate some of your other links as well even if they aren’t affiliate links: people should always be unsure of your intent
• Always make sure you comply with FTC regulations for disclosure. If needed, use a nice non-machine-readable graphic for maximum stealthiness

photo credit: Aditya Rakhman

This post originally came from Michael Gray who is an SEO Consultant. Be sure not to miss the Thesis WordPress Theme review.

Can Google Detect an Affiliate Website

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Go to Source

When I was first starting in Internet marketing, one of the first books I read was Permissive Marketing by Seth Godin. The point of this book was that customers who give you permission to market to them are more valuable than those you have to interrupt, and you shouldn’t abuse that trust. One of the second lessons came from adsense, which showed how ads that were integrated into the copy always performed better than those placed outside of the copy.

While this is something I integrate into my projects, there are a lot of media companies that don’t. For example, here is a screen shot of the New York Times on the iPad. Notice the banner placed in the bottom of the page outside of the text.

What happens with the app: during your second story, an interstitial ad appears (which was never clicked on), getting in the way of reading the desired story. This, I’m sure, results in a low engagement. Last week, they made a change. Although the banner is still at the bottom and you still get the interstitial, they added a new format embedded in the text … And, even though I wasn’t the target market, I clicked the ad …

Interestingly, the ad directs you to an in app landing page with options…

…followed by a browser landing page where you could make a purchase.

So what is the takeaway from this?

• Use a service like Crazyegg (disclosure: they are an advertiser) or Google multi variant testing to experiment with ad placement.
• Try placements inside of the content at the top, middle, or bottom.
• Stay away from advertising that interrupts or blocks users from getting to the content they really want.

This post originally came from Michael Gray who is an SEO Consultant. Be sure not to miss the Thesis WordPress Theme review.

Integrated Versus Interruptive Advertising

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Go to Source

If your business targets consumers, do you already have a Facebook fan page?  If not, why?  With more than 350 million active Facebook users, it is time to embrace social media and let it help grow your business.  Not only is Facebook a great place to expose yourself to thousands of new customers, but Google is now using content from social media sites in their search results.  Once you have created a fan page, there are a few things you can do to ensure you get the most out of it.  Here are some tips and guidelines to use.

1. Entice people to become a fan

Once you have a fan page, how do you get people to become a fan?  Easy, by offering them an incentive!  This can be any type of freebie, reward or even a special offer which encourages them to do business with you.  It does not need to be expensive and can be something as simple as a $5 off coupon on any new purchase.

2.  Keep the content coming

You must give your fans a reason to visit your page frequently.  It does not have to require a lot of time.  You could occasionally post exclusive offers or talk about recent company events or news that is happening within the company.  It would also be a great place to mention any new products or service launches.

3. Create a personal connection

Dealing with people or companies on the Internet can feel very impersonal compared with face to face encounters.  Your goal should be to create a personal connection as much as possible.  How can you achieve this?  With pictures and video.    For pictures, you could post examples of your work, pictures of company events or an office tour.  With Video, it is only taking pictures one step further.  You could ask your employees to get involved to submit creative and cool content about the company.

4. Interaction is key

The entire social media environment is built around interactive communication, one person interacting with another.  Your fan page will not have any chance for success if you do not interact with your fans or customers.  Sitting back and waiting for it to happen will not work either.  You must initiate it and this can be done in several ways.  A few examples are:

• Offer a contest that involves the users to interact with your company for a prize.  For example, look at what Chilis Restaurant did last Christmas.  They asked their fans to submit a video of their own version of the Baby Back Ribs Jingle.  The best entry would win $1,000.
• Create a poll that asks for fan’s opinions on an important topic.
• Offer games or puzzles that are themed around your business or brand.

5. Sneak Peek

What better way to earn your fan’s loyalty than by giving them a sneak peek of something new coming up.  You can use this opportunity to make your fans feel rewarded for participating while receiving feedback from them on your new product or service before officially launching it to the public.

Best of all, look at what your competitors are doing on their fan pages for more ideas.

Curtis Stevens helps small businesses accept credit cards.  Whether you need credit card terminals or a wireless credit card processing solution, he has a product for you.

photo credit: laura padgett

This post originally came from Michael Gray who is an SEO Consultant. Be sure not to miss the Thesis WordPress Theme review.

Your Facebook Fan Page – 5 Ways to Make the Most of It

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Go to Source

The Shallows by Nicholas Carr proposes the following: that the Internet and all of the its shallow content is actually rewiring our brains and how we process information.

I’ll be completely honest–of all the books I read this summer, this was the one I least looked forward to reading and the one I most disagreed with. That said, it’s also the book I learned the most from. The premise of this book is that the Internet is actually changing our brains. One of the things I learned is that our brains have the ability to “rewire” themselves. Based on what we do with our brains on a daily basis, they function in different ways. An example from the book shows that taxi drivers in London have higher development in the areas relating to spatial relations because those parts of the brain are used more often as they navigate London’s complex streets. A second thing I learned from this book is that this rewiring continues throughout our lives. It doesn’t stop once we reach adulthood, and there’s a lot of scientific evidence in the book to back that up … a lot … which brings me to my problem with this book.

One of the author’s main complaints is that the Internet is changing how we think by removing our ability to deeply concentrate and think. Instead, we always remain on the surface with any type of reading. This is where the author and I disagree. While I will concede that some people are losing the ability (and desire) to focus deeply, the problem also lies with a lot of authors, especially the wordy ones. Back when I was in high school, we were assigned to read Moby Dick. At the time I thought it was awful, it was boring, and I never made it through the whole book. Later in life, I decided to try and re-read Moby Dick, and it was still bloody boring and wordy and in need of an editor. If the book was half the size, it might have some value. Compare that with the Old Man and the Sea. Now there’s a story I can recommend. It’s not just that I have a short attention span: after reading Moby Dick, I read Treasure Island by Robert Lewis Stevenson, which I loved. It had none of the slow moving wordiness of Moby Dick.

There are some authors (and bloggers) who love the sound of their voices and seeing their words on the printed page or screen. They spend time lovingly crafting each sentence so that the reader can slowly meander through the content at a leisurely pace. Then there are authors like Michael Crichton who cut right to the chase. Most readers prefer one type and, to them, the other will be either boring and wordy or superficial and without any complexity. Its not that I can’t read long books: I reread the Lord of the Rings trilogy when the movies came out a few years ago and read all of the Harry Potter books. I just prefer books that move at a faster pace.

It’s interesting that I read this book right after Clay Shirky’s Cognitive Surplus and Jaron Lanier’s You Are Not a Gadget .The books served as a nice contrast to one another. Is there some truth to the argument that the internet is rewiring our brains?I’ll have to concede yes, but I disagree that it destroys our ability to concentrate long term unless we let it. Speaking from personal experience, I’m reading now more than ever thanks to my iPad. And I’m reading lots of different types of books–see my kindle page as proof.

If you are a reader who likes in-depth prose that has lots of examples and backup information, you’ll love this book. If you are someone who prefers reading books that are direct and to the point, skip this book because you’ll probably hate it.
photo credit: Jon Olav

This post originally came from Michael Gray who is an SEO Consultant. Be sure not to miss the Thesis WordPress Theme review.

Book Review: The Shallows by Nicholas Carr

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Go to Source

A few weeks ago, I twittered about the demise of my Roku Soundbridge music player, and how I was now having to deal with using an old iPod to play my music. The folks on the Sonos twitter account happened to see my situation and agreed to send me two Sonos ZP120′s to review.

To be honest, I have heard of the Sonos system before. I hadn’t really investigated it because it looked too complex to set up, but nothing could be farther from the truth. The whole process was actually incredibly easy. Here’s a picture of the ZP120 in my kitchen. You can see the defunct Soundbridge and the iPod hooked up to my amplifier in the picture below:

Sonos ZP120 and Amplifier

I chose the kitchen for a few reasons: it’s where I spend a lot of time, I’ve got speakers hard wired in (see photo below), and it has a network hub. What…doesn’t everyone have a network hub in their kitchen? If you want your Sonos system to play network music or play internet radio stations like Pandora, at least one has to have a hard wire connection. If your network doesn’t have any connections where you want to listen, it’s not a problem–you’ll need a Zone Bridge BR 100. As long as one unit is on the network, it’s fine. The rest of the Sonos units will connect wirelessly.

Now I didn’t get a Sonos controller; instead, I used one of the many iPhones and iPod Touches around the house. You can also use a computer or iPad if you prefer. If you don’t have one, you will need a controller. After that, it was just a simple matter of telling the Sonos system where the music was located (in my case, on a file server in a completely different room), giving it a few minutes to index, and I was all set.

Now here’s where it gets cool: you can turn on the Sonos systems one at a time, more than one at a time, or all of them at once. You can have them playing different music or the same music in sync (if you’ve ever tried to set up home streaming server you know what a PIA that is). If you had two units on the second floor of your house you could have them sync playing the same music, and all of the units on the first floor sync’d up playing different music as well. If you were throwing a party, you could have the same music playing all over the house at different volumes. Here are some screen shots from my iPhone showing that.

Playing Pandora Radio

One Sonos Playing

Two Sonos playing different Music

Two Sonos playing the same music in sync

As you can see from the pictures it’s actually really easy to change music sources or combine the music sources into one big zone. The Sonos ZP 120 also has a line in, which I hooked up to the TV in the living room. Imagine watching the Yankee game and wanting to have it play throughout the whole house while you’re taking care of some chores. Doing it’s not a problem with the Sonos system.

Another great thing about a Sonos system is that, if you want to add to/grow your music system, you can: just add another unit, sync them together with two buttons, and you’re good to go. If you want to use a Sonos system as a standalone unit, you’ll need an S5 unit with speakers built in. It sounds great.

The only bad thing about a Sonos unit is the price. You can buy the components separately, but for most people the the bundled units make the most sense. They start at $999. That said, I know people who have had them for years without any problems and speak very highly of them.

If you’re looking to take the music you have on digital files and start playing it all over your house without worrying about complicated wiring, I can definitely recommend the Sonos music system.

This post originally came from Michael Gray who is an SEO Consultant. Be sure not to miss the Thesis WordPress Theme review.

Sonos Review

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Go to Source

Earlier this week Google launched the latest iteration of the SERP’s, Google Instant. While I, like everyone else, had fun playing and finding some of the holes in it, it’s really not a product that I think will succeed. To Google’s credit, I can’t ever say that I’ve heard people complain that Google takes too long to serve them results. What I do hear and personally experience is that I wish Google understood what I was looking for …

 I understand why Google launched a product like Google instant search: they feel that, because they are smart enough at predicting what you are looking for, they can interpret your query after a word or two–or sometimes after just a few letters. They think they know you so well that they can guess what you want without being told. Without getting too involved in what’s going on behind the scenes, Google is using previous search volume to predict the most likely term(s) you are looking for. It’s a sophisticated leap forward in technology to be sure, but it’s not something that solves a problem I hear people complain about. (As a side, this does give a lot more context to the bizarre statement Eric Schmidt made a few weeks ago: “They want Google to tell them what they should be doing next.”)

The problem that I have is getting Google to understand what I meant by that query. I work with search engines all day, so I like to think I have some expertise and can form queries that will get me the right result after one or two tries–or at least help me figure out what I should be searching for. Recently I was searching for a way to import an accountant’s file into Quickbooks on a Mac, so I started with [import accountants file quickbooks mac]. It turned up all sorts of lovely sales pages for the Mac version of Quickbooks. A few tries later I found that the combination I needed was [quickbooks mac accountant's copy]. Now, if Google was able to figure out my intent and serve up the results for the second query and save 15-20 minutes of digging around, that would be a great product, but serving me the wrong information faster via an ajax interface doesn’t solve my problem and doesn’t help me as a user. Oh–and for the record, at the time of this post’s writing, you can’t create or import an accountant’s file in Quickbooks for a Mac.

Not to sound like a conspiracy theorist nutjob, but what we’ve really got going on are the two wrong problems being solved. Google engineers and developers are smart people, and they want to do cool stuff and need to feel challenged (see users vs developers) . However, they move at pace much faster than most of the world and think that, if the rest of the world would just catch up with them, everything would be better. So we’ll just opt everyone in to this new advance we made. No need to thank us. Google opting everyone in without asking is pretty much standard operating procedure. It’s how they have decided to drag everyone into the future.  Secondly, by using search volume as a predictive indicator, Google is almost always going to be showing the highest dollar advertising first. I get it, NO ONE at Google will ever say that profitability has anything to do with user experience. Eric Schmidt says some bat shit crazy things on a predictably regular basis, but even he won’t say that out loud. They will all just realize it without it needing to be said.

Personally, I don’t think it’s useful. In fact, I think it’s distracting, like your annoying, nerdy, know-it-all nephew who answers your questions before you finish speaking. However, Google didn’t learn that all this complexity isn’t what people want from the failed Google wave and Sidewiki experiments. I can tell you that if I wasn’t an SEO, this would push me over to Bing … I suspect I’m not alone …

This post originally came from Michael Gray who is an SEO Consultant. Be sure not to miss the Thesis WordPress Theme review.

I Wish We Had Google Understand Not Google Instant Search

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Go to Source

While I may be on the leading edge of consumption trends (translation: I’m a spoiled geek who likes new shiny gadgets), I think it’s important to understand how things work and how they might look to the public at large in a few years.

RSS

While I admit rss is not a technology that is ever going to be adopted by the mainstream (see the big fat rss lie), it’s still something I use almost daily. For my projects, client projects, and search related industry news (and the occasional bit of humor), I use Google reader. I skim through the the posts first thing in the morning. Unless it’s urgent, I send it off to instapaper (more on that below) to read later. The Google rss converter has made this really efficient for sites that don’t publish rss directly. Since I started using an iPad, I use the mobile rss app that syncs up with Google reader. The cloud based synchronization is key for me and I feel will be for others in the future. I used to use newsrack, but the recent update made it unusable. Pulse is a good app, but the font is too small for my liking and the lack of instapaper integration made it a deal breaker for me. The mobile rss app also lets me send things to instapaper right from the app, which is another key feature. Check the end of this post for a client sanitized list of feeds I read.

Netvibeso

For sites that I run and Twitter accounts I run for myself or clients, I need things to write about, link to, or tweet about. Netvibes is the tool I use to get things done. I set up one tab per industry and quickly parse through it every day or two. I use easytweets to schedule my tweets in the future so I can get things done, have a life, and go on vacation without losing momentum (see my easytweets review).

iPad News apps

I mentioned before that the iPad has changed how I consume media and interact with social media sites. I’ll read stuff, tweet out links that are interesting, send them to instapaper, or email them to myself to remind me to schedule them later with easytweets.

Instapaper

Instapaper is one of my favorite apps. It saves me a tremendous amount of time. I’m also glad to say I’m a paying pro supporter of the service. Instapaper allows me to read content in a stripped down, text only version, and it allows me to do it offline–useful for times when I’m on a plane, on vacation someplace that doesn’t have wifi, or in another country that my 3G plan doesn’t cover. The most important aspect is cloud based synchronization. So I can send items to instapaper from my computer, then I can read them while I’m on a treadmill at the gym (using my iPhone) or on a plane (using the iPad). Once I am back on the grid, a quick refresh brings everything back in sync. Another cool aspect: I can forward a tweet or link to instapaper and it is smart enough to follow the trail and extract the content. The stripped down and extracted content has two important aspects. First, partial feeds don’t work with instapaper so, if you publish partial feeds, you suck and should rethink that practice. Second, learning how to push  out content and ads where the ads don’t get stripped out will become more important in the coming years (see advertising and usability)

Flipboard

Flipboard is a cool new iPad app that takes content from your Twitter, Facebook, and other news sources, extracts it, and presents it in magazine format. Legally, it is on questionable ground, but it’s really cool, easy, and just a plain fun way to get your news and content.

Click here to view the embedded video.

The thing Flipboard underscored for me is that you need to moderate who can put things in your streams if you want it to be useful, effective, interesting, and not polluted with spam. (see the SEO community friends and scorpions).

My feed list

I debated publishing this list for a while but decided to do it. You may find some well known marquee name SEO and marketing feeds aren’t on the list. To be honest the quality on a lot of SEO blogs is hit or miss nowadays, and I don’t have time to wade through the posts. When one of them does make a noteworthy post it will get retweeted by enough people and will find me anyway, so I don’t worry about “missing” the news as much as I used to. The second is I don’t have time for multiple-posts-per-day blogs. I know there are a lot of SEO news blogs that do this and they are high quality, but I just don’t have the time to read 3-6 posts per day. Sorry.

photo credit: henribergius

This post originally came from Michael Gray who is an SEO Consultant. Be sure not to miss the Thesis WordPress Theme review.

What I Read and How I Read It

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Advertisers:

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2. CrazyEgg.com – Supplement your analytics with action information from click tracking heat maps.
3. BOTW.org – Get a premier listing in the internet’s oldest directory.
4. Ezilon.com Regional Directory – Check to see if your website is listed!
5. Page1Hosting – Class C IP Hosting starting at $2.99.
6. Directory Journal – List your website in our growing web directory today.
7. Content Customs – Unique and high quality SEO writing services, providing webmasters with hundreds of SEO articles per week
8. Majestic SEO – Competitive back link intellegence for SEO Analysis
9. Glass Whiteboards – For a professional durable white board with no ghosting, streaking or marker stains, see my Glass Whiteboard Review
10. Need an SEO Audit for your website, look at my SEO Consulting Services
11. KnowEm – Protect your brand, product or company name with a continually growing list of social media sites.
12. Scribe SEO Review find out how to better optimize your wordpress posts.
13. TigerTech – Great Web Hosting service at a great price.

Go to Source

This post is part of a series on How to Silo Your Website. The other parts in the series are: How to Silo Your Website: The Masthead, How to Silo Your Website, The Breadcrumb , How to Silo Your Website: The Content, and How to Silo Your Website: The Sidebar. For this last part, we’ll be looking at the footer.

Ah…the website footer. Aside from meta keywords and descriptions, it’s hard to think of an area that’s been more abused. A common spot for selling run of site links, turning into a link brothel (looks in the direction of you Lendingtree), or for stuffing content below the copyright information that you can’t even argue is for bots not humans (looks at you Match.com).

It’s hard to resist the temptation to abuse the footer, which IMHO is why links in the footer possess so little value compared to links in the sidebar, masthead, and content sections. So how can a site owner use the footer to their advantage?

First, let’s look at usability. All of those service links that I said you should remove from the masthead and sidebar: this is where they should go. Over the years, people have learned to look here if they need information. However, sometimes the amount of links can make the area look … well … excessively linky. If that’s a problem, I suggest checking out this post on beautiful footers to get some ideas about how to keep it looking good and easy to use.

Another strategy I’ve seen used that often has good results is the dynamic footer, first popularized by Weblogs Inc (the company Jason Calacanis sold to AOL for 25 million). The basic concept is to keep the links in the footer changing and pointing to new or updated content (for Weblogs Inc it was used to show links to new posts all from multiple sites across the network. See divester for an example). While this tactic isn’t as effective as it once was, keeping the footer dynamic is still a good idea worth trying (see How to Make Your Homepage More Dynamic for tips on how and what to include).

So what are the takeaways from this post:

• Put all of the service links you removed from other sections here.
• Look for ways to keep it usable and visually appealing.
• Try to include as much dynamic content as possible.

While there are still some subtleties to siloing a website, hopefully this series has pointed you in the right direction. If you have any questions or followup posts you would like to see, drop me a tweet and let me know @Graywolf.
photo credit: twicepix

This post originally came from Michael Gray who is an SEO Consultant. Be sure not to miss the Thesis WordPress Theme review.

How To Silo Your Website: The Footer

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Advertisers:

1. Text Link Ads – New customers can get $100 in free text links.
2. CrazyEgg.com – Supplement your analytics with action information from click tracking heat maps.
3. BOTW.org – Get a premier listing in the internet’s oldest directory.
4. Ezilon.com Regional Directory – Check to see if your website is listed!
5. Page1Hosting – Class C IP Hosting starting at $2.99.
6. Directory Journal – List your website in our growing web directory today.
7. Content Customs – Unique and high quality SEO writing services, providing webmasters with hundreds of SEO articles per week
8. Majestic SEO – Competitive back link intellegence for SEO Analysis
9. Glass Whiteboards – For a professional durable white board with no ghosting, streaking or marker stains, see my Glass Whiteboard Review
10. Need an SEO Audit for your website, look at my SEO Consulting Services
11. KnowEm – Protect your brand, product or company name with a continually growing list of social media sites.
12. Scribe SEO Review find out how to better optimize your wordpress posts.
13. TigerTech – Great Web Hosting service at a great price.

Go to Source

The following post is part of a series on How to Silo Your Website. You should review, How to Silo Your Website the Masthead, How to Silo Your Website the Breadcrumb, How to Silo Your Website the Content. For this part, we’ll be taking a look at the sidebar.

IMHO the sidebar is the second most abused and misused part of a website (the footer is the most abused which we’ll talk about in a later article). The sidebar is so abused because people stick too much third party content, widgets, social blocks, and simply too many links. In the past year I have worked on 5 client sites with between 300-500 links in the sidebar. No, that’s not a typo. That’s over 300 links in just the sidebar.

My first bit of advice: do some click tracking to see what people are clicking on. I like to use crazyegg (full disclosure: they are an advertiser, but I used them before they became one) or similar service that actually tracks X/Y coordinates on a page. See what people are clicking on and remove the elements that people don’t use.

Next make sure links to your most popular pages/content/products are there. Resist the temptation to go overboard. 10 is a good number; 15 is as much as I would recommend. If you are in a shopping environment, links to the main departments or categories is also a good idea. If you use faceted navigation (ie product/category links that change based on where you are or your last click), be careful. If the links are straight with no URL parameters, you have nothing to worry about. If the links change and pass parameters you are better off using no-follow. This isn’t to conserve page rank: it’s to prevent creating an infinite site from a search engine perspective. Using the rel=canonical tag is a good back up, but bandaid solutions are no substitute for bad architecture. You never want to leave thinking or decision making to chance with an algo.

Remove links to your service pages (privacy, contact, tos, etc) unless you need them for visual aesthetic (to balance out the content section). In fact, you want to reduce and remove as many links as you possibly can. We aren’t trying to conserve link equity but to control where it goes. It’s a slight but subtle difference.

If you are selling advertising, have affiliate links, or other banner-type content, this is probably where it is. If it’s what pays the bills and keeps the site running, keep it; if doesn’t convert then remove it.

If you have the ability to add in featured content THAT CHANGES daily, weekly, or (at the bare minimum) monthly, then do it. Also if you can add in related content links that change on a per page basis, then do it. You want to keep the sidebar content dynamic, with static and non parametric url’s. Bonus points if you can change the order based on templates or randomization.

So what are the takeaways here:

• Reduce the number of links to a minimum.
• Remove non essential elements, especially third party content, based on user testing.
• Include links to related or featured content, especially if it changes.
• Looks for ways to change or randomize content.

Next in the series: How to Silo Your Website: The Footer
photo credit: Eyeshotpictures

This post originally came from Michael Gray who is an SEO Consultant. Be sure not to miss the Thesis WordPress Theme review.

How To Silo Your Website:The Sidebar

Related posts:

1. How To Silo Your Website: The Breadcrumb Trail In Part 1 we looked at How To Silo Your…
2. How To Silo Your Website: The Masthead One of the more powerful tools an SEO can use…
3. How to Silo Your Website: The Content The following is part of the series How To Silo…
4. Putting a Content Based Website Together We’ve covered long term content and short term content, information…
5. Website Informational Pages Now that I’ve covered long term content and short term…

Advertisers:

1. Text Link Ads – New customers can get $100 in free text links.
2. CrazyEgg.com – Supplement your analytics with action information from click tracking heat maps.
3. BOTW.org – Get a premier listing in the internet’s oldest directory.
4. Ezilon.com Regional Directory – Check to see if your website is listed!
5. Page1Hosting – Class C IP Hosting starting at $2.99.
6. Directory Journal – List your website in our growing web directory today.
7. Content Customs – Unique and high quality SEO writing services, providing webmasters with hundreds of SEO articles per week
8. Glass Whiteboards – For a professional durable white board with no ghosting, streaking or marker stains, see my Glass Whiteboard Review
9. Need an SEO Audit for your website, look at my SEO Consulting Services
10. KnowEm – Protect your brand, product or company name with a continually growing list of social media sites.
11. Scribe SEO Review find out how to better optimize your wordpress posts.
12. TigerTech – Great Web Hosting service at a great price.

Go to Source