Putting a Content Based Website Together

We’ve covered long term content and short term content, information pages, and touched briefly on advertising. Now it’s time to bring it all together.

File Structure

One of the absolute biggest mistakes I made when building websites was to not plan far enough ahead. So I ended up with pages like “www.example.com/keyword.html“, “www.example.com/keyword.php”, or “www.example.com/keyword.asp“. Really the best way to do it is “www.example.com/keyword/“. Yes I know you can fix it with htaccess and mod rewrite but “ugly URI’s” really irk me. I have one site that has 500+ pages that I won’t touch because the file structure FUBAR. Additionally think about your information architecture. For example if you most popular items are shoes and dresses and they come in red and blue I would do this

example.com/dress/red/
example.com/dress/blue/
example.com/shoes/red/
example.com/shoes/blue/

and not this

example.com/red/dress/
example.com/red/shoes/
example.com/blue/dress/
example.com/blue/shoes/

Groups directories and files by categories and not characteristics.

Content Management Systems

I’ll admit I haven’t tried many of these, to be completely honest I use my own homegrown products. I’ve never been able to find “off the shelf” software that lets me do things exactly the way I want. I don’t mind rolling up my sleeves and digging in the code, but if that’s not your thing by all means use a CMS. They really can save you hours of time.

Include Files

These can be a real lifesaver. If you use the same header, footer and side panel navigation elements make them include files. When you need to make a change it’s only one file to update. This has saved me hours of work.

New Content

Unless you have an older website that is well spidered, adding new pages deep within your website can often be problematic. One of the best solutions I have found for this is adding a “New Articles” section to the homepage or side navigation. This makes the new content readily accessible to the spiders. Keep 10 to 15 items in the list and include a snippet if the page design allows it. Add new items to the top and remove old one’s from the bottom
TIP: I’ve found some very interesting results using Google Site Maps (see Google Site Maps Review coming soon).

tags: ( | | | )

tla starter kit

Related posts:

  1. Advertising on Content Based Websites After spending time on research, creating content, buying a domain...
  2. Change Your Content Based on Traffic Intent A few weeks ago, Brent Payne made a post about...
  3. No More Link Begging: 4 Engagement Methods for Content-Based Link Building Link begging is the practice of identifying link prospects, usually...
  4. How to Silo Your Website: The Content The following is part of the series How To Silo...
  5. How to Do A Content Audit of Your Website If you have a website that’s been around for a...

Advertisers:

  1. Text Link Ads - New customers can get $100 in free text links.
  2. BOTW.org - Get a premier listing in the internet's oldest directory.
  3. Ezilon.com Regional Directory - Check to see if your website is listed!
  4. Need an SEO Audit for your website, look at my SEO Consulting Services
  5. Directory Journal - Get permanent deep links in a search engine friendly directory
  6. LinkWheel SEO - Get Web 2.0 Backlinks
  7. TigerTech - Great Web Hosting service at a great price.
  8. Article-Writing-services.org - Article Writing Services creates quality content for websites and blogs at no cost to site owners.
  9. Link Building Services - Hire WeBuildLink.com for well-planned advanced link building campaigns. Very affordable. Contact us now for a FREE evaluation.
  10. Join 500+ top agencies & publishers who rely on The HOTH every day. US based, enterprise-grade support. High quality, contextually relevant links. 100% money back guarantee. Try it now.
  11. Professional website designs - Get a unique brand image with website designs that sets you apart and convert your visitors into customers. Make a brand, not just a website

See my disclaimer about advertising and affiliate links