Website Content: Depth and Context Counts

We deliver a great number of websites every year and many of those come complete with a Content Management System (CMS). Giving the customer the ability to manage not only the content of the individual pages but also the structure of the website is a real plus for the customer.

Whether you are in the position of having a CMS or have been asked by your website designer for a website structure for your site it is vital to keep in mind a few rules for guidance. These will help you both with Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) as well as with visitor conversion.

Firstly, let us keep in mind the concept of SiteRank. This is the idea that your website as a whole has a certain weighting amongst search engine results. The higher the SiteRank the higher your listing will be on the major search engines.

The SiteRank concept actually bundles together a whole load of search engine good practice such as domain name relevance, server location etc. For now, it's good enough to understand it as an abstract concept. It is certainly different from PageRank and the importance that each individual pages have within your site … but I don't want to confuse things.

The key thing to remember is that the value will degrade the further into your site you go. The more clicks you are away from the top level of your site structure the more diluted will be the SiteRank concept.

You might want to keep that in mind if you decide to structure your data in a very layered way. Catalogue sites often feel the necessity to do this but products found 7 or 8 clicks down from the home page will not have the same impact as those higher up.

So how to get around this? The solution is simple and relates to the second rule of thumb that you need to keep in mind: Make sure you provide direct links and promote important content within your site. Of course "important" could mean products that give you a high sales volume or an event that you want to promote because it's close to the final entry date.

In our catalogue case, for example, you might want to create links at each level of the catalogue structure that highlight - and link directly to - such important products. Also use the home page to promote these deeper products further.

Moreover, a structured website is a good one but make time to break through that structure with promotions of deeper pages and deep links wherever you can.