SEO for large websites : The Bottom Up Approach
When it comes to search engine optimization for large websites, things get so complicated that you need to bring out all your tactics in all its glory. I find it interesting that optimizing large websites for search engines is a real test of how well you know SEO.
How is optimizing large websites different from smaller ones ?
So, first off, is there really a difference between the optimization procedures ? Technically no, if you think about it from the grass root level. But if you think from a strategy perspective, yes ! And a big yes that is.
What is the difference and how to deal with it ?
1. Volume of pages
The most obvious difference is that you’ll be dealing with more number of pages, and things can get complicated as each page needs careful attention. In smaller websites, the number of pages are so low (let’s say below 100) that it is easy to find out what’s important and what’s not, but when it comes to thousands, things can get tricky. How to solve it ? Let’s discuss in point number two.
2. Weight-age and importance of pages
When dealing with large websites, it is mandatory that you define different categories and subsets of pages. And one primary metric to take into consideration while creating categories is to find out how the search engines might consider them important. Based on their page rank, links, and content availability, create different batches of pages, so that you know how to go about dealing with each of them.
3. Taking a step by step approach with the content pyramid
A strategy I follow while dealing with a large number of pages is to divide the entire content into different sets based on their importance (as discussed above) and creating a pyramid, based on the content. I normally select two factors while creating categories. a) Content and b) Importance The pages with the most content, like the landing pages goes to the bottom of the pyramid. They generally form the most part of the website as they tend to be large in number. And the most important pages align above these narrowing down on their volume.
The Pyramid, Bottom Up Approach
The best approach to optimizing large websites is to follow this method by which you follow a step by step method of first mapping out the entire list of pages on the website, then categorizing them into important, less important batches, and then doing the SEO optimization processes based on the content on the pages. The key features are that the large number of pages with the most of content will be dealt with immediately and targeted for long tail keywords which will be as comparable to the number of pages in hand. The idea is to get the low hanging fruits first and get some traction initially on the search engines. Once this phase is in full swing, the focus can be shifted to the second category of pages which are more important than the pyramid base, and has better authority but lesser number of pages and content in place.
The idea is to leverage on the traction gained by the pyramid base and extrapolate the SEO metrics there from. Here, you could target more specific keywords that are close to the primary or competitive keywords reserved for the top level pages. In my opinion, here a lot of onsite optimization has to be done, along with little of internal linking changes and more of offsite optimization. Be careful not to mess up with the website structure too much as we have the top level pages to deal with soon.
Finally, after finishing the bottom and mid level pages, it is now safe to move to the top level pages where a lot of precision and targeting is required. Pick up the reserved competitive keywords, and match it up with the most relevant pages and do the onsite optimization part. But the highlight of this phase is going to be the offsite optimization that you do and the authority you can harness over the time. Mostly, these pages would be the top level, close to domain name pages, which already has a good amount of authority and link juice accrued, so you might also want to consider doing a proper link analysis here and spreading all those link juice evenly and with priority to importance onto other pages below the top level.
While all this action is going on on the top level pages, the earlier optimized bottom and mid level pages would be working well, and giving you results. Based on the study done on their analytics, it might also be worth to tweak certain optimization criteria for certain pages. The idea is to find the relevant information from your goals and analytics.
Really useful advice for working on sites with many product pages. Adding the optimisation to the lower priority pages first could actually be beneficial as the search engines won’t penalise the site for loading the higher priority pages first.
I don’t want to harass you, but please learn the difference between “it’s” -meaning “it is” and “its” which implies ownership (the dog lost its collar). You seem to get this wrong a lot in your posts. Also, the expression is “grass roots” level with an “s” on the end. Not “grass root.”
And look at this careless typo you have in the last sentence:
“crux is t find the relevant information from your goals and analytics.”
You obviously have knowledge on this topic. I bet you would get more feedback if you had someone proofread your posts for grammar and typos before you publish them. If someone already does proofread your posts-fire them because I haven’t read a single blog post by you that didn’t contain multiple errors. Just trying to help!
Thank you and I completely agree. This is something I always get stuck with. Will try to improve. As a matter of fact, typos come in mostly when I’m posting from the blog backend/scribefire tools (while I travel). When I use WLW, its more easier to blog, but unfortunately its not available on Mac. Appreciate your comment.
Mani’s writing skills are really good for an Indian.Having said that,i do not mind the grammar errors at all.He knows what he is talking about.That’s the most important of all.
I guess people read differently. I read for the message rather than proof reading every blog and article that I come across. I don’t think anything here has such bad grammar or spelling to distract from the message by a long shot. Mani always has some great information and ideas clearly explained.
But hey, it is worth remembering that “it’s” comes from the two words “it is”! It’s a simple one to learn.
You are gracious to take correction; and I can only imagine it is tough (if I don’t use a contraction, I am not as likely to make that mistake) to attain the professional proficiency in a language that may not be your first.
Interesting point of view on the pyramid. I believe that links have so much more weight than on site optimization that I am not sure it matters, but it is worthy of exploration. Good post, IMO.
This is very educative post and helps a lot to work on SEO for large websites. The explanation of The Pyramid, Bottom Up Approach is really very useful.
Interesting article. I am struggling with SEO myself and agree off site is a tough nut to crack. Thanks for the free advice