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Question: I have a page with lots of pages so far about 50 looking to addmore to get to that 100. The question I have is how to interlink the pages would a site map from the front page be OK? Or having a link on the front page for each page so the front page would have 100 links on it?
Can someone clear this up?
Ive found a great way to have a small amount of area contain as many links as you'd like is to take advantage od a drop down menu. From what I have read here, google can follow them, and its great for pages without alot of real estate to give.
And on the topic, I have created a site that is now 112 pages, and has been using bretts techniques, along with others gleaned here. It just just got its first deep crawl last month. I have made several changes inbetween that time and now. This month we will see what these techniques can garner you almost immediately.
Considering the changes that have occured since this article was published, and the time frame of starting now instead of a year ago, perhaps this will shed some light on its continuing effectiveness.
depending on how you want to divide internal PR, and the importance you want to give the pages linked should determine which way you'd like to go.
Interlink them when appropriate and on topic. (that's in addition to a standard navigation system that links to your main topic pages).
i do have a sitemap as well.
I have 150 pages all closely related links are shown on about 60 pages pages including a home page link, with these 60 links on each page, plus a site map link. A home page link and a site map link are given on every page within the site.
So in effect, I have 60 interlinked pages, and all 150 links provided on the site map page.
I do also use a doorway page but content rich, not a redirect and no links to it from the site.
Until a week ago or so the doorway page also had 60 links, I have now removed all links from this page except to the home page. (dunno if I have done the right thing yet)
Both my home page, and my doorway page are PR5, with all others PR4. (a few selling pages are PR3)
I was guessing by removing 59 links from the doorway page may increase my home page PR, just a guess I will not know for a while.
So back to your Q, re drop downs:
I have another site, which I must admit is going to expire!
But I use drop downs there, the home page is PR4, the rest of the pages are PR1?
I can't honestly say the drop downs are the cause though.
<select name="select">
<option value="link.htm">link title</option>
</select>
NOT a javascript drop down. Knowing this, is there still a problem?
Steve:
By removing most of the outgoing links from your doorway, the homepage you do still link to is now getting a higher internal PR "vote" from that page. I do think that, while it may not push you up a whole PR notch, it certainly will help. Before the vote it had was divided up 60 times.
I also used an html drop down in my example, not java,
It took bloody ages to configure!
Though some here could have done it 10 mins, oh well I like to learn, all it costs is time
In some user testing I've done dropdown menus have been little used at the beginning, but after a while, groups tend to begin using them for quickness sake. These were in user groups of 30 people, in a singular dept testing an intranets admin tool set. This was for a site that needed quick access to multiple reporting tools, and was obviously used alot. You can adjust those findings for your own site and UI. Zerox park place spent alot of money to discover that drop down menus were a good way for users to be able to access info.
I personally believe you should design your site to work the best for your users. You can't always play to other sites conventions simply for the sake of being standardized; it may just not work for your site. Pick the UI thats fits your information architecture, but acknowledge that most users may be familiar with the 'amazon' way of purchasing, and that can be used to your advantage.
So, it seems that you can use a list menu, but support for that is non-existant on some crawlers, and is currently supported, though intermitantly, on google. I will never abandon the 'site map' link on my site, but I do find the dropdown a real estate friendly was to get all of your links on the front page. You should keep in mind that you are splitting up your index vote amongst every page, if that matters to you.
would some guru please straighten this out. i know alot, but i certainly dont want to steer anyone astray. if ive got this wrong, please chime in.
From a promotion point of view, I'd consider putting the 'main' links near the top of the site structure (usually home page) and the secondary links below. Ideally, the main links can be categories that link down to the secondary topics (see Brett's Theme Pyramids [searchengineworld.com]). Otherwise, the secondaries could go on the site map, pulling some PageRank but leaving more for the high priorities.
From a Google ROI perspective, the 'main' links might be those with more or less competition than the others (depending on whether you're able to get high positions for your niche or more popular phrases). Alternatively they might be the phrases most often searched (if you're confident of being able to get the top spots) or the phrases with the best potential return (eg. high margin products).
Ultimately, if you stick to the fundamentals (good link text, matching page titles and body text) then if you just structure your links from a user perspective it should turn out to be pretty good for Google too.
If you end up with a lot of links (maybe more than a hundred), then you're better off splitting them onto more pages.
