Website Outline
Creating a website outline is at the core of how to link a website for a local business. This outline represents the domain name (homepage), directories, sub-directories, and page structure of your website. You can have as many nested directories as you like but it is best to keep it to a minimal level for SEO purposes. The deeper a page is nested inside directories and sub-directories the less relevance it is attributed by search engines.
It is also important to note that the actual terms you use for your directories, sub-directories, and pages will be the actual filenames used in your website URLs. These terms need to correlate with search terms you want to achieve a high-ranking for in search engines.
——————————————————————————-
Outline Template for Standard Website
* Domain Name (Homepage)
o Directory 1
+ Sub-Directory A
# Page 1
# Page 2
+ Sub-Directory B
+ Sub-Directory C
o Directory 2
+ Sub-Directory A
# Page 1
# Page 2
+ Sub-Directory B
+ Sub-Directory C
o Directory 3
In the above example you will see the domain name or homepage is #1, this is the main page of your website. Below your domain name you will have multiple directories that represent your product/service categories or regions served, then inside these directories are more specific sub-directories, finally within your sub-directories are pages; each representing specific product/service & city pairings. Here is an example of how a URL will display for Page 1 inside Sub-Directory A which is within Directory 2:
• http://www.domainname.com/directory-2/sub-directory-a/page-1 – The words in the URL are very important to the way search engines rank your web pages.
——————————————————————————-
Example Website Outline – Colorado Instruments
When people are looking online to purchase a product or service locally they will enter “product in city” or “city service” into their favorite search engine to find it. As an example for this blog post I will use a fictional local music store in northern Colorado serving the cities of Denver, Fort Collins, and Loveland. John Doe, the music store owner offers music lessons plus sells guitars, drums, and keyboards. John would like to rank high for organic searches such as “denver guitar lessons” or “colorado acoustic guitar” or “fort collins piano”, etc..
Lets pretend that John’s music store is a new business and needs to come up with a business name and domain name at the same time. Based on the principles described in our previous article titled How to Name a Website John has decided on coloradoinstruments.com (at the time of this post this domain name is available, btw). Also available is northerncoloradoinstruments.com, but John felt that name limits his territory, plus coloradoinstruments.com is shorter. A quick check in Google AdWords keyword tool shows that the term “Colorado Instruments” is searched 3,600/month. This gives him a head start over choosing a domain name like johndoemusic.com when it comes to organic search traffic for musical instruments in Colorado. Now it is time to create a website outline for the music store.
Outline Template for ColoradoInstruments.com
For this example it makes most sense for the categories to be city names, sub-categories to be instruments groups, and pages to be individual instrument types. We also added some standard web pages to the top level as you can see at the bottom of the outline.
* Colorado Instruments
o Denver
+ Guitar
# Electric
# Acoustic
# Bass
# Lessons
+ Drum
# Traditional
# Digital
# Lessons
+ Keyboard
# Piano
# Electronic
# Lessons
o Fort Collins
+ Guitar
# Electric
# Acoustic
# Bass
# Lessons
+ Drum
# Traditional
# Digital
# Lessons
+ Keyboard
# Piano
# Electronic
# Lessons
o Loveland
+ Guitar
# Electric
# Acoustic
# Bass
# Lessons
+ Drum
# Traditional
# Digital
# Lessons
+ Keyboard
# Piano
# Electronic
# Lessons
* Mission Statement
* Testimonials
* Contact Information
* Directions
As far as SEO for local business websites is concerned the importance of using city, product, or service names for your directories can’t be overstated. By organizing the directories and pages in this way we have inherently helped the organic SEO for John Doe’s music store. Let’s take a look at how the URL’s for some of the pages on coloradoinstruments.com will read and how they relate to local searches:
• http://www.coloradoinstruments.com/denver/guitar/lessons – The term “denver guitar lessons” is searched approximately 1,000 times a month. By linking a website in this way John has “denver guitar lessons” in the URL for the page of his website that is specifically about Denver guitar lessons. This is exactly what search engines look for.
• http://www.coloradoinstruments.com/fort-collins/keyboard/electronic – If someone is searching for an “electronic keyboard in Fort Collins” search engines will direct them to this page.
Create your website outline by substituting your product/service and city name categories with the ones in the above template. Of course you can add extra categories, sub-categories, and pages if needed. The next step in the process of how to do a website is to learn how to link web pages.
In today’s environment of corporatism, local businesses are faced with many challenges when competing with national and regional chains.
We strive to utilize our experience in the creative industry by helping local and small businesses overcome these challenges with effective marketing strategies. Our creative passion is to fuse the art of photography, web, and design with the craft of narrating distinctive stories each business has to tell.
It is our desire to become strategic partners with our clients by building long-term relationships and providing purposeful marketing with measurable results.
Warren Diggles Photography Web Design
Pictures of Colorado
Colorado Web Design
Loveland, Colorado
Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Warren_Diggles