Site Architecture - Link Structure

Structuring a Site's Internal Link Structure. Consider:

Homepage
SiteMap
Internal Links

"The homepage is generally considered the most important page of a site - it is the top level document and usually attracts the most inbound links. From here, search engine robots can normally reach pages that are within three clicks of the homepage. Therefore, your most important pages should be one click away, the next important two clicks away and so forth. " - quoted from entireweb & Craig Broadbent - see below

Internal Links - "The next thing to consider is how to link the pages together. Search engine robots can only follow generic HTML href links, meaning Flash links, JavaScript links, dropdown menus and submit buttons will all be inaccessible to robots. Links with query strings that have two or more parameters are also typically ignored, so be aware of this if you run a dynamically generated website. " quoted again from Entireweb & Broadbent

SiteMap - How important?

The site map is the "nexus" by which all of which your pages get into the search engine. Or at least, by which all pages are guaranteed to be only two steps from the front page. Google now has some clever sitemap approach which provides feedback to them about your site architecture and its changes. It supposedly helps improve your rank....


Original article sent by entireweb - written by : Craig Broadbent is Search Engine Optimisation Executive for UK-based internet marketing company, WebEvents Ltd. Clients of WebEvents benefit from a range of services designed to maximise ROI from internet marketing activities. To find out more, visit http://www.webeventseurope.com/.

Content Distribution

I write alot and would like these articles to be republished broadly.

My best list of sites that take articles and press releases.
And another point, google tracks where articles appear first so before you put them out for syndication, publish them at home

I did two releases thru a consulting company who put them on PR newsnow. They seemed to get some distribution. They can be found at:
Children Going BackToSchool Increasingly Login to Educational ...
Rapidly Growing Homeschool Trend Stimulated by New Internet Tools

Heres a pretty good article on the topic of content distribution.
http://www.prnewsnow.com/Write%20Better%20PR/SEO%20Content%20Distribution%20Linking%20For%20Newbies. It mentions websites that distribute content: isnare.com, amazines.com, and goarticles.com.

I have a number of articles ready for distribution such as:
Internet Safety
Learning to read
Summer Skills Sharpener
Learning Math Skills

And there are others that are near-ready such as:
HomeSchool Curriculum - Many Choices (bottom half of the page)
Learn to Read
Reading Skills
PreReading Skills
Phonics
Reading Comprehension
Building Vocabulary
Reading Fluency

Anybody out there with some real expertise in turning my content into gold via content distribution with embedded links / keyphrases?

Google PPC

Until recently (sept), 100% of my sales were generated by google ppc. Since then, natural search and advertising is generating between a third of my traffic and new members.

However, I spent the previous year glued to my google ppc account. Because my online education curricula is very low cost, I needed to manage my cost per customer acquisition very tightly. But, despite google being my No 1 business partner, they were not that helpful in teaching me how to use and optimize my use of their tools.

I did a monthly analysis by keyword of my spend per new customer (ie avg cost per click x number of clicks = total cost. Total cost / new customers = cost per customer.) For keyphrases that did well, I increased my bid. For those that did poorly, I decreased my spend.

New features seemed to show up faster than I learned them. The ability to put the keyphrase automatically into the title was a cool one that I stumbled across after unthinkable amounts of time on a manual approach to that function.

There are not that many good articles on this topic. Heres one.

http://www.prnewsnow.com/Write%20Better%20PR/How%20to%20Cheat%20Google%20AdWords%20Select

Blog promotion with Ping-o-matic

I have found the neat pingomatic tool. Here are some questions?

- Does anybody know if blogger has a built-in pingomatic? They do have a setting which means that a blog and its updates gets listed in a directory? How does that compare to putting an update in the ping-o-matic?

- Are there other tools that provide a comprehensive (better or different) listing service than Ping-o-matic?

- Has anybody ever named any tool as well as the ping-o-matic? It appeals to the geeks who have pinging at the command line for years as well as the newbies who like the cool-oh name.

- What happens if you put in a non-blog into the ping-o-matic? Does that effectively build links and visibility? Or does ping-o-matic include a screen-o-matic function so that it only works on blogs and other web journaly things?

For instance - can I put in a newly updated page on my website - such as HomeSchool Curriculum or Special Needs Learning and use it as a link-builder?

Wow - thanks for the email... theres one called blogflux - http://pinger.blogflux.com/

Parked Domains - How best to use them?

I have these domains currently parked which means that they are pointing towards domains that have some content.

Can anyone tell me what good they do from a traffic generation or SEO point of view?

Can anyone tell me the best way to use relevent domain names? I see some companies with entire structures of links and ads built around unused domains. Are these structures profitable? Are they accessible to small scale companies like myself?

www.earlyeducationcenter.com
www.help-your-children-learn.com
www.help-your-kids-learn.com
www.kidslearnfaster.com
www.learning-in-the-digital-age.com
www.parenting-in-an-electronic-age.net
www.parentingbible.com
www.time4learning.net
www.time4math.com
www.time4reading.com

http://www.ikeepbookmarks.com/OnlineKidsLearning

Google Page Rank Dance

Sunday, my home page rank was a 6.

Monday day - I was a 5. sigh.

Then Monday evening, a 6 again!!!!

Today, I'm a 5. sigh sigh.

Is this normal?

Interactive Learning - Homeschool Curriculum

Domains - Parked & Useful?

Parking domains.

I have more recently pursued this topic:
Unused Domain - How best to use them Dec 2005
Monetizing Domains - 9/06
Lisa's discussion at Webhosting Talk on using idle domains

I havesome idle domains that I have just registered and parked (ie redirected to other domains where I've put something up). Do they help with page rank and traffic?

I notice that before I redirected them, someone (the registrar?) had installed some algorithmic software that put up alot of pages and ads built around the keyphrases of the domain name. Anybody know where these packages come from? I suspect for the right names and domains, there might be some reasonable income from these set-ups...

Update Note - 8/06 - At the local http://www.techshowflorida.com
www.educational-games.org
www.learningames.com
www.ilearninggames.com

learning-in-the-digital-age.
www.parenting-in-an-electronic-age.com
www.parenting-in-an-electronic-age.net
www.parentingbible.com

www.time4learning.net
www.time4math.com
www.time4reading.com
The Early Education Center dot com
www.help-your-children-learn.com
www.help-your-kids-learn.com
www.kidslearnfaster.com

TimeForLearning
TimeFourLearning

Link Weight

My homepage is now a Google PR 6. Many of my pages are PR 5s (including pages like "Contact us" and "privacy statment" but thats another question). Some are 4s. Some are unranked.

Question: Whats the relative benefit for me to getting more links from 0's? 1's or 2's? 3s or 4s? 5s? 6s? 7s? I think the algorithm probably depends a bit on the base that you are starting from and your current rank. For me, I have several hundred relevent links in including a about a dozen 5s and 6s.

Heres my theory. For me, assuming relevency:

a link from a PR7 is worth 5x a PR6
PR6 is worth 5x PR5
PR4 is worth 5x PR4
PR3 is worth 5x PR2
PR2 is worth 5X PR1
PR1 is worth 5X PR0

I would be pleased to hear other theories, particularly if they are based on more solid analysis than my own......

My site: interactive homeschool curriculum