paynt - 2:04 pm on Nov 30, 2001 (gmt 0)

Ok, feedback shows the folks appear to be ok with me highjacking the board for a bit to ramble on. Please don’t let that stop you from posting though. This is a discussion board so discuss.

How do I handle common navigation links without diluting a subtheme?

Point 11: rcjordan answered this one and I couldn’t do it better. If there’s a common navigation that needs to be included on each page then java is great because humans see it but spiders don’t. Others can way in on technical ways to keep spiders from following or better yet point you to discussions we’ve already held on this.

To keep themes pure though I always use text links on each page and include the relevant anchor data as mentioned in Point 1. I also follow RC’s recommendation with hallway pages to facilitate larger groups of links within a theme. Spider food. My first level canonical pages have links to all their downstream second level pages. Each second level includes all the third level pages and so on.

If I create sub-directories, am I hurting my page ranking? I thought pages were supposed to be close to root (maybe this is just old SEO info in my part).

Ah, PR and that takes us to Google. In spirit of trying to stay on theme with the theme of this forum on keywords I’m going to suggest that’s a perfect stand alone question for the Google forum. There’s also a good chance you can get Chris R to weigh in as well so I’d suggest bring that up there.

I think that’s it for your first post. Later you’ve added this question

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?

That’s where these canonicals or satellites come into play. Every site I build develops over time. I may be adding to each a little bit here to one a little more to another. Start with the content that you do have and work on developing and building that. Give yourself room to wiggle and grow in laying out the structure of your site and continue to feed it and fill the gaps as you develop the material. I think you are a whole lot better off being the best in your smaller niche with the option to expand towards the bigger picture than taking on the whole universe and losing the expert status in the process. This is a great question and I hope others will weigh in with what the do in this situation.

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)?

Ok, confess you took a class in asking great questions.

I don’t think it can be said better than what Brett wrote here
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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.

PageCount sent me a sticky on this one so fess up PageCount and throw it in.

My answer is yes. Some of my canonicals are only three pages because that is all I have to offer on the subject and these can be powerful three page wonders.

Ok, we can return to our regularly scheduled programming. Please discuss folks. I’ll be around today but I have a very busy weekend planned with the kids and Neil Diamond (tickets) on Sunday :)

People have asked recently why I give so much away. I love that :)
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