Themed web-sites

can anyone give me an explanation

[nickc001]

Can anyone give me a clear explanation of 'themed' web sites, i.e. are they built around a hierarchy of keyphrases? What type of site structure do they use + what effect does this have? How do documents inter-relate to each other in their linking patterns etc.

Are these all important factors in a themed site?

thanks,

Nick

[Woz]

Nick, the absolute best article on Themed Web Sites [searchengineworld.com] is Brett's over at Search Engine World. Not trying to fob you off, but the best is the best. See how you go with that and then we can clear up any additional questions you may have.

Onya
Woz

[brotherhood of LAN]

Hey Nick, I'll give it a shot but some may have a more clear explanation :)

The way I see it, a theme is like cutting some DMOZ categories out of the mix and going into great detail about it.

The theme, for instance, may be webmasters and webmaster information, where the home page acts as the front door of the theme.

When digging deeper down, it is soon apparent that all things webmaster-ish can go into great detail (look at all these forums).

The easiest way I think of a theme is one of those crows feets diagrams.

Smaller sites might have a more compact theme like

widgets
>>colours
>>>red
>>>blue
>>>>this widget
>>sizes
>>>small
>>>medium etc etc

You may want to use these 2 threads as a reference
[webmasterworld.com...]
[searchengineworld.com...]

Both of them are very well known, tried, tested, and successful :)

[Brett_Tabke]

Here's the deal, "theme" as I defined it [searchengineworld.com], is really just a euphemism for off-the-page contextual criteria search engine - (now say that 10 times). We needed a method that exploited all the factors of the new 'theme' engines. Many of the new engine algos use a variety of off-the-page criteria including: directory listings, links, link context, page context, and site context.

The best research doc on the subject is the WiseNut White Paper. It lays out most of the theme systems used by many search engines today. Those that aren't are surely headed in this direction:

[wisenut.com...]

Building a "theme based site" is a method for exploiting the best of the new contextual (eg: theme) search engines.

[caine]

good find Brett, excellant little paper

[nickc001]

Hi guys,

thanks for all the information. Some great articles. After trying to take it all in I have a couple of questions...

1) In Brett's article it says '..be very careful what you submit these days. Don't give the search engines an excuse to decrease your sites relevancy due to your own obfuscation of keywords'.

Does this mean that any non-keyword rich pages such as 'Contact Us' and 'Terms and Conditions' should have a robots.txt file at the top of them preventing the SE from indexing these pages so that these pages don't cloud over the main theme?

2) Should the theme pyramid structure be represented by physical directorys, i.e. the root page in the root directory, the first level pages one folder down, the 2nd level pages two folders down i.e. www.mydomain.com/firstlevel/secondlevel/secondlevelpage.htm

As discussed in the threads outlined above it seems PageRank diminishes with every level of folder downwards, therefore it would seem preferable to try and keep all your pages in one or two folder levels (say rather than 5 folder levels). Would this effect the themed pyramid if the pyramid linking strategy - i.e. linking vertically to the next level down and next level up were kept?

i.e. does the SE take into account directory structure or is it just the Linking relationships between the documents it takes into account?

thanks for your time,

Nick

[caine]

1) clarity of term, in each and every page, its all too easy to start criss-crossing terms all over the site.

2) The Themed site is determined structurally by directories of various depth dependant on the size and content matter being dealt with. Sub-domains can also be used to subsection the site to topic, you'll note this approach with massive sites, SE's, PLC's, etc.

3) Pagerank, works in weird and wonderful ways, and it does not stand to reason that your base url is PR>8 and your money pages, five levels down are PR>3, with the right type of internal linking, the site ROI pages, should not be that low. This can be dealt with by obtaining links to the major topic sub-head-sections of the entire site, second level down from the Brand page (base url). Also reducing PR leakage.

4) Directory structure is important, as Brett's model explain's how low level theme pages, strengthen the position of its section head page, then that reinforces that head page, etc. Giving not only a very strong relative argument towards the SE, for the SERPs, that you wish to obtain. But also theme's with the right sort of R & D, can also lead to hundreds, if not thousands of extra money making terms being found by the search engines, that you would not have dreamed off making money. THIS IS WHY I LIKE THEMEs

[nickc001]

so should search engines be excluded from non-keyword rich pages such as 'Contact Us' and 'Terms & conditions' by using a robots disallow in these pages?

[brotherhood of LAN]

>disallow contact pages etc

This is what I do, because a contact us page is something that IMO, will not be searched for. This would be google's priority - delivering pages that people are searching for, not just ones with the correct keywords in them

I believe that some people think that excluding them also will preserve your pagerank...though not sure about that.

All in all, the theme is about a subject, the company, and its contact pages are just part of the business that aims to deliver the subject - so IMO exclude them, though I'm sure opinions and situations differ.....