egomaniac - 4:51 am on Nov 30, 2001 (gmt 0)

This is great, thanks paynt and WG for further detailed posts. I find the more info the better.

I am getting a lot out of this, and how to theme my site is becoming clearer to me. There seem to be some different approaches that may all be valid given the unique situation of the target website.

>>>How do you divine the Sun?<<<

I like the Solar System analogy. Divining the proper sun for it seems to be key. Do this right, and life forms grow on many of the planets. Do it wrong, and you just have a mess of disorganized matter.

In my example, one could divine the sun to be about "management". Very broad and general. This would encompass all subtopics. And for a large site, this might be the appropriate thing to do. It would be a very "pure" approach.

The purity of this approach would sacrifice the impact of having a high traffic phrase on the home page such as "management training".

But then again, I guess what really matters is do I have enough material on a wide variety of subtopics that would make this truly a "management" supersite?

Currently I don't. So how do I set a framework in place so that as I build more content and fill out these other subthemes, I can chunk-up and broaden the main theme of my site?

>>>Similar but different keywords<<<

How does the SE know that dogs and cats are pets? How will it know that tips and techniques are aspects of training? I guess this is because we tell the SE so when we setup a theme page (subdirectory/canonical index page)?

I think this gets into the whole Term Vector concept, of which I am only vaguely aware. But I understand that the base TV #s are based upon the Yahoo or ODP category structure and some of the pages in it.

>>>Cross-linking at 2nd Level<<<

Perhaps the best approach depends upon overall topic, or the amount of content in the site or both. It seems that some topics could lend themselves to more of a pyramid structure, where the 2nd levels possibly closer in meaning. If so, cross-linking more could be beneficial. On the other hand, if the 2nd levels were further apart in meaning, then this would be more of a solar system approach.

This also seems to touch upon a classic Google linkage debate: Do off-theme links hurt you, or do they just count for less? I don't know if anyone knows the answer for sure on this one.

>>>Any Size minimums for canonicals<<<

If I only have 10-15 pages per canonical, will breaking my site into 4 or 5 subthemes work? Extremely subjective question I know. Maybe not even answerable here, but I thought I'd throw it out.