Where should I centre my content Hubs?

[Catherine_Selectaglaze]

I look after a manufacturing site which has a well structured architecture when it comes to our products. There is also a benefits section and an about section.

In addition to managing the three main information sections I've also been setting up a blog with topical content divided into four categories (Built environment, Secondary glazing in practice, Treat of the month, Project profile).

My question is, where do I position my content hubs? Having worked through Cyrus's 'How to Rank 25 Step Master SEO Blueprint', I've realized that my approach of simply linking back to main top level pages is at best arbitrary, at worst negative in terms of SEO.

Would I be better off asking our designers to set up category landing pages within the blog that relevant new copy can be linked to (currently the blog is just set up without category landing pages and I categorize each post with a tag that is used to sort the posts into their respective location on the blogs homepage? Currently the blog is an option on the main sites top level navigation and I link relevant blog pieces to relevant areas within the site.

Basically I'm struggling to understand how to implement Cyrus's recommendation to create themes with my current website structure. Can anyone help?

Thanks Mozers

[Nigel_Carr]

Hi Catherine

The problem with setting up tags and categories within your blog is that the content will likely conflict with the main categories on your website.

Sure, so that from a user point of view but I would advise you noindex/follow them so that you don't have them appear in Google but link juice is allowed to flow through the pages.

When you post it is perfectly OK and good for SEO, to link to internal pages using anchor text. Just be aware that if there is already a link to those pages in the main menu then your efforts will be thwarted as Google only reads the first anchor to a page it comes to. If that is in the menu then your link on the page will be largely ignored.

Backlinks from blog pages and of course other forms of internal linkage strengthens the whole site in term of allowing link juice to flow through all connected pages.

Don't think of it as arbitrary linking or negative for SEO. Do think of linking to pages that are two or more clicks down, so that they will not have a main link in the menu.

I repeat - if you do set up categories and tags in the blog then noindex/follow them as they will produce low grade/skinny pages.

Regards

Nigel

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