Best SEO structure for blog

[scanlin]

What is the best SEO page/link structure for a blog with, say 100 posts that grows at a rate of 4 per month? Each post is 500+ words with charts/graphics; they're not simple one paragraph postings.

Rather than use a CMS I have a hand crafted HTML/CSS blog (for tighter integration with the parent site, some dynamic data effects, and in general to have total control). I have a sidebar with headlines from all prior posts, and my blog home page is a 1 line summary of each article.

I feel that after 100 articles the sidebar and home page have too many links on them. What is the optimal way to split them up? They are all covering the same niche topic that my site is about.

I thought of making the side bar and home page only have the most recent 25 postings, and then create an archive directory for older posts. But categorizing by time doesn't really help someone looking for a specific topic.

I could tag each entry with 2-3 keywords and then make the sidebar a sorted list of tags. Clicking on a tag would then show an intermediate index of all articles that have that tag, and then you could click on an article title to read the whole article.

Or is there some other strategy that is optimal for SEO and the indexing robots? Is it bad to have a blog that is too heirarchical (where articles are 3 levels down from the root domain) or too flat (if there are 100s of entries)?

Thanks for any thoughts or pointers.

[FrankWickers]

Well the problems you're trying to overcome are the exact reasons why a good CMS blog system pulling and storing posts from a databse is extremely effective.

Doing things your way, all static HTML/CSS with no databse, it would definitely make sense to only list the most recent posts on any given page/chategory, and then come up with an archive system for the rest.

You should have a search feature you can put on your site so as to let people easily pull up older buried posts. I don't personally have any experience with it, but you could try Google's Custom Search Engine to see if it could accomplish what you need.

As far as the hierarchy of the domain levels goes I would never go deeper than 4 levels with your categories/posts. You can almost never have too flat of a hierarchy... example being looking at SEOMoz's structure. They are a massive blog with a large number of posts, and yet almost all of the posts trace to a URL structure of seomoz.org/blog/post-name. So in theory that would create a very broad and flat structure, yet they don't seem to have much if any indexing issues.

[RyanOD]

Rather than trying to imagine what a good strategy is in this situation, why not look at someone in a similar situation. Unless I am misunderstanding your site structure, it sounds like you at least have a home page and a blog - much like SEOmoz. Let's take a look at how SEOmoz handles this situation.

All Pages

• Persistent site search allowing users to find any SEOmoz content at any point in time during a visit

Home Page

• Clearly calls out latest posts to SEO Blog and YOUmoz Blog

SEO Blog & YOUmoz Blog Home Pages

• Shows latest posts and lets user view by 5, 10, 15, 25, or 50 posts
• View most popular posts
• View posts by author
• View posts by category
• Pagination at bottom of page lets visitors move easily to older blog posts

Post Pages

• View most popular posts
• View posts by author
• View posts by category
• View related Q&A

[mattotoole]

I'll second just about everything that Frank said.

Use an XML sitemap and pinging services.  I haven't tested it formally, but my Wordpress and Drupal sites that incorporate this get indexed instantly and completely, while some other sites seem to lag.

Consider featuring your best or most important posts.  Lists of popular posts are easily automated, but are they really your best or most important, or about your most important keywords?  Some posts make a big splash then fade away, while others may grow in popularity over time.  By putting direct links to this content on the home page, it'll continue to get traffic, social media shares, and links, and continue to build rank.  (Besides being in front of users, more rank will flow into it from the home page.)  Every month, re-evaluate which pages should have direct links.

[KeriMorgret]

Mike, what type of structure did you end up using for your blog? Do you have any interesting insights to share, either with us here or in a YOUmoz post? Would love to hear them!