Importance of Structure & Content Hierarchy for SEO
At SEO Melbourne before we undertake a campaign we like to spend considerable time educating our clients. This is important for two reasons.
1. For the client to understand that which we want to achieve they must first understand how and why we do it.
2. To make critical website changes to sometimes protective clients they must understand the reasoning and logic behind the changes to be confident to forge ahead.
So for SEO Melbourne to run a smooth and successful campaign we very much need the client to be up to speed on various aspects of SEO. We educate and enlighten in the best way possible, we use various techniques to get our point across. Apart from running our SEO TV web channel, we also provide various analogies on the fly to explain various aspects of SEO which got me thinking.
It would be really handy for me to explain one of them. This analogy is based on SEO Structure & set up which ties in with content hierarchy and asset positioning.
SEO & The Family Tree.
The Flanders family tree below is highly detailed and full of colourful Flanders characters, it displays some similarities with keyword hierarchy and the applicable content structure that would be applied to it. How?
If we look at the top of the tree we have Lord Thistlewick Of Flanders and Lady Nedwina Dreadful they are the great great great grandfather and great great great grandmother of good old Ned Flanders. If we think of a website and how this applies to SEO then we would say that great great great grandfather Flanders and Lady Nedwina Dreadful are the homepage keywords. As they are at the top of the family tree they are the most important and therefore need to be given the most respect as you would your great great great grandfather or grandmother. Below this we have a 3 more lineages before we hit Ned & Maude Flanders.
How does the family tree analogy apply to SEO? If we envisage the two main keywords at the top of a family tree being the two most important and generally the highest volume/competitive keywords and then if we think of the sub categories beneath this then we start to form a hierarchy. Hierarchy is important for many reasons, it sets out content in a neat and user friendly manner and allows users to funnel through appropriate categories to find what they need. If Ned & Maude are what we want to sell (lets face it selling Ned would be great) but we have many Flanders then we must create hierarchy to enable users to get to their relevant Flanders for purchase.
Setting out a well thought out hierarchy and applying well researched keywords can be the difference between selling Flanders and his family or them sitting around unsold like a bad smell.
Choosing a well thought out content hierarchy and applying a well researched keyword strategy to this hierarchy forms the foundation of a successful SEO campaign. This is just as important as all the actioning that takes place after this, because without a thorough plan of attack we are fighting battles that we can not win or we are winning battles that are not worth winning.
