Google handles every internet page separately. Every page has its own unique PageRank and you can’t tell the success of a website based only the PR of it’s Default Index Landing Page. A page that’s deep and abandoned in your website may very well be the most important page on your site. While Google does understand the concept of Site and Domain, every page is scrutinized on its own merits.
Every page is sacred. Every page is great. If a page is wasted, Google gets quite irate
We spend so much time fretting about the number and quality of links that are associated with your websites that we often overlook or ignore how important it is that our business and marketing websites be tightly stitch together, from a series of patches into a beautiful quilt; or, maybe more apropos, take all of those music tracks, those songs, back into the studio and turn them from a series of singles into album.
Link Your Site Together with Optimized Navigation
What’s the solution? Well, your WordPress, Drupal, Joomla, Plone, Squarespace, etc, templates take care of some of this. They wrap your core and ancillary content with navigation links. If you’re saddled with a proprietary content management system (CMS) then you’ll need to make sure that all your navigation links are either textual or have text associated with all the navigation that your website designer turned unnecessarily into graphics. In the case of an exuberance of GIFs instead of text in your site title, your home link, and your site navigation breadcrumbs, there are always two solutions: get that designer to be 100% less lazy (slicing up Photoshop mockups into graphics-heavy websites is so passé) and convert those images into stylized text using CSS, HTML5, and Adobe Typekit; or, make sure each of those graphical buttons, links, and headlines have ALT text alternatives (if your site can’t be navigated easily by the blind then it can’t be navigated by Google).
Knit Your Site Together with Internal Textual Links
This is easy but oft overlooked. Even an SEO neophyte knows that keyword-rich hyperlinked phrases are the bread and butter of Google’s algorithm — even today, after all these years and an infinity revisions. So, when you want to offer link love to someone, you just make sure you write something like thanks to Chris Abraham for being so awesome and then link that entire phrase with a link to the person, content, company, or site you want to honor, in this case chrisabraham.com/about/ — this can also be used legally, gladly, openly, transparently, and effectively by using this strategy within your own site (and also between all the sites that you control, including your social media profiles).
Stitching Your Site Together is Easy so Start Right Now
Go through every single one of your pages (there are no pages too measly) and make sure any time you refer to another product, a person, a service, a blog post, an events, or anything that lives in any way on a separate page on your site, be sure to link it there. If you mention “my partners” then you should like to your partners page. While it could theoretically be better to include more keywords such as Services at Gerris, be sure to balance readability with comprehensive keywording.
After you’ve gone through and made sure that ever name, product, service, case study, testimonial, or clients is linked to your respective About, Products, Services, Case Studies, Testimonials, Team, Partners, Blog, Contact, and Clients pages, then consider, during round two, writing additional copy that could include internal references and associated links to other pages within your own site, your own domain, or make sure there are also links and references to other properties you might be promoting and marketing as well, such as a landing page, a page dedicated to your founders or management, as well as key social media pages, including personal and corporate pages on LinkedIn.
Don’t start with copywriting, start with just linking the copy that’s there. It might feel like you’re doubling your work, but once you get those links in there based on the copy that you already have, then you can allow yourself the sandbagging inevitable associated with doing any real revision or expansion of a website, including getting okays from the stakeholders and the lawyers and the management team and the CMO and all that tripe. It’s hella easier to integrate those textual hyperlinks on copy that’s already been approved than it is to say that you want to add entire phrases, sentences, and paragraphs into a page that the powers-that-be have already signed off on.
Don’t Go Rogue
While I am not recommending this outright, you, might be able to do your entire first round of intra-site linking (stitching, weaving, knitting) without anyone at all being the wiser. It’s not like you’re changing the copy, tone, or content of the site, you’re merely making sure the continuity of content is optimized to allow better self-reference and flow. But if you do that, proceed at your own peril.
Take Back Those Client Links
Any time a blog post refers to your client, past or present, why not link it to your client page instead of directly to your client, especially when your campaign is done (you’re allowed to go back into your archives of blog posts and link that content any way you like — you’re even allowed to rewrite parts or all of your post — this isn’t the Bible or the New York Times, this is your marketing and promotional copy, it’s yours to do with what you like).
Google’s Data Highlighter
If your site is connected to Google Webmasters and you’re consistently template-based, you might want to explore Google’s Data Highlighter, which allows you to teach and train Google’s spiders and bots how to understand your pages be they articles (such as blog posts), book reviews, events, local businesses, movies, products, restaurants, software applications, and TV episodes.
Unless you site is especially specialized, you only really need to concern yourself with articles and maybe products.
In Closing
You should already know all this stuff. Shame on you. But not everyone knows everything and this isn’t the focus of everyone out there. Everyone wants high PageRank links coming in from out there — even in 2017. You really can’t control how external people link to you but you totally can control how you link to yourself. So, please start with that today. It won’t cost you any treasure, only your time. And it’s easy and it can be fun, if you’re a nerd like me.
Feel free to own the yacht but hire a crew if you’re not yet seaworthy. If you get my drift and want to adopt the yachting lifestyle yourself but either don’t have the mad sailing skills yourself, don’t yet posses a world-class crew, and don’t know yet where to go, then you should give me a call or reach out me by email — so I can help you pilot your vessel now, in the tranquil blue-green shallows of the Caribbean, as well as in the roughest seas and into — as well as out of — the storm.
If you’d like to chat more, call me at +1 (202) 869-3210 Ext 0001 email me, or feel free to self-schedule a 15-minute call, a 30-minute call, or a 60-minute call with me.
Good luck and go git ’em, tiger!
Feel free to own the yacht but hire a crew if you’re not yet seaworthy. If you get my drift and want to adopt the yachting lifestyle yourself but either don’t have the mad sailing skills yourself, don’t yet posses a world-class crew, and don’t know yet where to go, then you should give me a call or reach out me by email — so I can help you pilot your vessel now, in the tranquil blue-green shallows of the Caribbean, as well as in the roughest seas and into — as well as out of — the storm.
If you’d like to chat more, call me at +1 (202) 869-3210 Ext 0001 email me, or feel free to self-schedule a 15-minute call, a 30-minute call, or a 60-minute call with me.
