Building A Structured Website With Organized Content Brings More Traffic

Before you begin building your website, take the time to carefully plan its layout. A well structured site with great, organized content will keep your readers and the search engines happy!

Your site should be structured in three tiers. Tier 1 is your home page and contains your navigation bar. Tier 2 may have multiple pages, one for each of your main topics. Tier 3 pages contain sub-topics of Tier 2 pages. Organize your website's content in this simple fashion to make it easier for visitors to navigate through your site and make it easier for search engine spiders to find all of your pages.

Search engine spiders do not like to fish around for pages and links. That is why many sites offer a site map. A site map is one page that contains links to all of the content pages, like an outline of the site. Most people agree that a page with a lot of links on it are valued less than content pages that casually link to other content pages. Therefore, the site map may be a low level page that is not too prominent.

Using three tiers allows you to go from topic to sub-topic to sub-sub-topic all by natural links. For example, assume Tier 1 is the homepage for a gardening site. There may be several Tier 2 pages, one of which may be all about vegetable gardening and its benefits. A Tier 3 page off of that Tier 2 page may be about how to grow extra large tomatoes. Do you see how the site visitor would like this structure? They click on "Vegetable Gardening" and are given links to more specific pages on related topics. Search engine spiders like the three tier structure too. It means they do not have to dig through multiple layers of useless links. Be sure to use profitable and consistent keywords on related Tier 2 and Tier 3 pages for optimal success with the search engines.

As you develop additional content and increase the number of pages on your site, giving your visitors more to read through, you will become know as an expert. Your site will become a popular one for information about your niche.

When visitors find your site through search engines, they are seeking information that solves a problem or answers a question they have. Having logical content structure makes it easier for them to find what they are looking for. If they land on your site and you try to sell them something right away one thing is sure - they will leave your site and find another site that will give them information. Give your visitors the valuable information they are seeking. Answer their question and in the process let them know about your services and products.

Providing valuable, relevant information helps build rapport and trust with your readers. It positions you as an expert. Valuable information provided in a structured manner keeps your visitor on your site longer since they are actually reading content and looking for more. Search engines notice this and rank you higher. How well and for how long your site can keep visitors is known as "stickiness." Your site must attract and keep visitors for as long as possible.

Provide structured content that pre-sells your products, positions you as the expert and focuses on highly profitable keywords. The key to building a successful web business begins with these things. The secret to content is to satisfy both your visitor and search engines. Lose one or both and you are doomed. Having a successful web business starts with effective content.