Best Linking Structure

What's the best linking structure for a simple 10 page website? The 9
internal pages are all in the main directory. The way I have it now is I
have links for the 9 internal pages on the index page of the site and on
each of the 9 pages I have two links, one is for the root domain address
and the other is index.html and I also have those 2 links on the index
page as well. I'm trying to concentrate all the power of the site to the
root domain url which is the page of the site I want to get listed high.
Do you think having an index.html link as well is bad or good to help
that? It's sort of like having 2 different links to the homepage and not
sure if that's such a good idea if I want to get the homepage listed
high? Also none of the 9 internal pages have a link to them-self, only
the 2 links to the homepage (root domain link and an index.html link).
Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

__/ [jo] on Tuesday 18 October 2005 16:35 \__

What's the best linking structure for a simple 10 page website? The 9
internal pages are all in the main directory. The way I have it now is I
have links for the 9 internal pages on the index page of the site and on
each of the 9 pages I have two links, one is for the root domain address
and the other is index.html and I also have those 2 links on the index
page as well. I'm trying to concentrate all the power of the site to the
root domain url which is the page of the site I want to get listed high.
Do you think having an index.html link as well is bad or good to help
that? It's sort of like having 2 different links to the homepage and not
sure if that's such a good idea if I want to get the homepage listed
high? Also none of the 9 internal pages have a link to them-self, only
the 2 links to the homepage (root domain link and an index.html link).
Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

Hi Jo,

A large number of links, all of which lead to the main page will neither
help your visitors, nor will they reward your front page. Keywords densi-
ties and the page title will have a far greater impact. You are inclined
to think that the number of link will significantly (perhaps proportional-
ly) increase your ranks, but since they all come from the same domain,
they are all 'siblings'.

Due to the number of pages in your site, I suggest you have a navigation
bar that incorporates all pages in a logical manner. Users will avoid the
two-click navigation (back to home -> Section X or browser's back button
-> Section X), which is a bonus. Likewise, crawlers will be less likely to
get 'stuck'. The issue can be discussed in much more depth, but I hope my
answer helps you realise what's probably ideal given the scale (possibly
nature too) of your site.

Best Regards,

Roy

--
Roy S. Schestowitz | "Beauty is in the eye of the beerholder"
http://Schestowitz.com | SuSE Linux | PGP-Key: 74572E8E
4:35pm up 54 days 4:49, 4 users, load average: 0.15, 0.17, 0.17
http://iuron.com - next generation of search paradigms

Roy Schestowitz wrote:

A large number of links, all of which lead to the main page will neither
help your visitors, nor will they reward your front page. Keywords densi-
ties and the page title will have a far greater impact. You are inclined
to think that the number of link will significantly (perhaps proportional-
ly) increase your ranks, but since they all come from the same domain,
they are all 'siblings'.

We don't know what weight Google gives to links that are 'siblings' as
compared to links that are not.

Do we?

Mikkel
--
Nyttige gratis-programmer:
http://lakjer.dk/mikkel/freeware.shtml

"jo" <jo (AT) nospam (DOT) com> wrote

What's the best linking structure for a simple 10 page website? The 9
internal pages are all in the main directory. The way I have it now is I
have links for the 9 internal pages on the index page of the site and on
each of the 9 pages I have two links, one is for the root domain address
and the other is index.html and I also have those 2 links on the index
page as well. I'm trying to concentrate all the power of the site to the
root domain url which is the page of the site I want to get listed high.
Do you think having an index.html link as well is bad or good to help
that? It's sort of like having 2 different links to the homepage and not
sure if that's such a good idea if I want to get the homepage listed
high? Also none of the 9 internal pages have a link to them-self, only
the 2 links to the homepage (root domain link and an index.html link).
Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

My opinions...

Make every link rel="nofollow" except the links to and from the home page.
Never mention index.html anywhere on any page.
Put all links in full (in the html code) like http://www.xyz.co/ and
http://www.xyz.co/countryside.htm
There is no need for a page to link to itself unless you use
filename.htm#name and want to help people find named anchor points further
down.

This assumes you want emphasis strictly on the home page only. If you have
multiple focusses of interest you need a hybrid of the above star structure
with more than node.

Best regards, Eric.

__/ [Mikkel Moldrup-Lakjer] on Tuesday 18 October 2005 16:55 \__

Roy Schestowitz wrote:

A large number of links, all of which lead to the main page will
neither
help your visitors, nor will they reward your front page. Keywords
densi-
ties and the page title will have a far greater impact. You are
inclined to think that the number of link will significantly (perhaps
proportional-
ly) increase your ranks, but since they all come from the same
domain, they are all 'siblings'.

We don't know what weight Google gives to links that are 'siblings' as
compared to links that are not.

Do we?

Mikkel

It's probably quite a complex thing to express mathematically, but if it
was known, it would have probably been misused. Think of scenarios where
a small collection of people link from hundreds of pages to their frien-
ds and get the same thing in return. Think of blogrolls and do a backli-
nks search on some popular blogs or software that benefits from footers,
albeit in the latter case, many _unique_ sites (thousands) can be invol-
ved. Some of the high-ranked bloggers are those who distributed tools or
plug-ins where they bothered to have a URL footer for SEO purposes.

Roy

--
Roy S. Schestowitz | Linux + tax = Mac OS = (Windows - functionality)
http://Schestowitz.com | SuSE Linux | PGP-Key: 74572E8E
5:15pm up 54 days 5:29, 4 users, load average: 0.28, 0.21, 0.14
http://iuron.com - next generation of search paradigms

On Tue, 18 Oct 2005 16:43:02 +0100, Roy Schestowitz
<newsgroups (AT) schestowitz (DOT) com> wrote:

__/ [jo] on Tuesday 18 October 2005 16:35 \__

What's the best linking structure for a simple 10 page website? The 9
internal pages are all in the main directory. The way I have it now is I
have links for the 9 internal pages on the index page of the site and on
each of the 9 pages I have two links, one is for the root domain address
and the other is index.html and I also have those 2 links on the index
page as well. I'm trying to concentrate all the power of the site to the
root domain url which is the page of the site I want to get listed high.
Do you think having an index.html link as well is bad or good to help
that? It's sort of like having 2 different links to the homepage and not
sure if that's such a good idea if I want to get the homepage listed
high? Also none of the 9 internal pages have a link to them-self, only
the 2 links to the homepage (root domain link and an index.html link).
Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

Hi Jo,

A large number of links, all of which lead to the main page will neither
help your visitors, nor will they reward your front page. Keywords densi-
ties and the page title will have a far greater impact. You are inclined
to think that the number of link will significantly (perhaps proportional-
ly) increase your ranks, but since they all come from the same domain,
they are all 'siblings'.

Note programmer talk there. Siblings.

Due to the number of pages in your site, I suggest you have a navigation
bar that incorporates all pages in a logical manner. Users will avoid the
two-click navigation (back to home -> Section X or browser's back button
-> Section X), which is a bonus. Likewise, crawlers will be less likely to
get 'stuck'. The issue can be discussed in much more depth, but I hope my
answer helps you realise what's probably ideal given the scale (possibly
nature too) of your site.

The philosophy you need to follow is that engines are dumb and need to
be beaten about their thick heads until they understand the purpose
and content of each and every one of your ten pages. One good way to
do this is to include a key to their identity in the anchor text of
the words you use to link to each of them. So, if you have ten pages,
you have nine opportunities to link to the home page using an
appropriate keyword in the link. Thus, if your home page is about
green widgets, have each of them link to it along the lines of
<a href="index.htm">Green Widgets Home Page</a> or similar. If you
have a page on the history of said widgets, a good way to let the
engines know that's what it is about is to link to it from all the
other pages saying <a href="yada.htm">Green Widgets - a History</a>.
And so on and forth.

BB
--
www.kruse.co.uk/ seo (AT) kruse (DOT) demon.co.uk
Elvis does my SEO

On Tue, 18 Oct 2005 17:55:24 +0200, Mikkel Moldrup-Lakjer
<mikkel (AT) fabel (DOT) dk> wrote:

Roy Schestowitz wrote:

A large number of links, all of which lead to the main page will neither
help your visitors, nor will they reward your front page. Keywords densi-
ties and the page title will have a far greater impact. You are inclined
to think that the number of link will significantly (perhaps proportional-
ly) increase your ranks, but since they all come from the same domain,
they are all 'siblings'.

We don't know what weight Google gives to links that are 'siblings' as
compared to links that are not.

Do we?

Mikkel

Huh?

BB
--
www.kruse.co.uk/ seo (AT) kruse (DOT) demon.co.uk
Elvis does my SEO

Mikkel Moldrup-Lakjer wrote:

We don't know what weight Google gives to links that are 'siblings' as
compared to links that are not.

Do we?

Depends on definition of 'we' ;-)

I think *we* do know that internal links do add weight, though
understandingly small. So, the OP has a choice between adding a small
weight or not adding anything at all. With only 9 pages it probably would
not matter much, but as the site grows, it's best to have the links
structure already in place for the future. Besides, with internal links
there is a great opportunity to pass some anchor text keywords. Also small
but definitely beats no anchor text at all.

--
Cheers,
Dmitri
See Site Sig Below
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"jo" <jo (AT) nospam (DOT) com> wrote

What's the best linking structure for a simple 10 page website? The 9
internal pages are all in the main directory. The way I have it now is I
have links for the 9 internal pages on the index page of the site and on
each of the 9 pages I have two links, one is for the root domain address
and the other is index.html and I also have those 2 links on the index
page as well. I'm trying to concentrate all the power of the site to the
root domain url which is the page of the site I want to get listed high.
Do you think having an index.html link as well is bad or good to help
that? It's sort of like having 2 different links to the homepage and not
sure if that's such a good idea if I want to get the homepage listed
high? Also none of the 9 internal pages have a link to them-self, only
the 2 links to the homepage (root domain link and an index.html link).
Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

Scrap index.html if it is the same as root then put 9 internal links on
every page plus 1 external to a related authoritative strong site.

On Tue, 18 Oct 2005 18:05:09 +0000 (UTC), "T.J." <no1 (AT) home (DOT) invalid>
wrote:

Also none of the 9 internal pages have a link to them-self, only
the 2 links to the homepage (root domain link and an index.html link).
Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

Scrap index.html if it is the same as root then put 9 internal links on
every page

At last an answer that makes sense. It's a ten page site the only
realistic way to link this together for both the bots and users is
either a menu linking to every page of the site or something similar
(10 links in the footer).

If you want to be creative add the links within the content and don't
worry about adding the same link more than once. If it makes sense add
the links, links are good :-)

Makes little difference if you link a page to itself, will add a
little extra anchor text that might help, certainly won't cause harm
and makes updating the site much easier.

David
--
Free Search Engine Optimization Tutorial
http://www.seo-gold.com/tutorial/