Themes and phrases for small sites

Pyramid? What pyramid?

[heini]

The themed pyramid as visualized by Brett is a wonderful structure for
a shop selling x products. But how useful is it for smaller sites targeting just a handful of highly competitive phrases?
Sure it´s always advisable to try and build themes, but how could you apply the pyramid structure, where you go from very broad terms, single words, to very specific phrases, like productname plus attributes?

Example: the main phrase you are going for is: "holydays on the moon".
This is your product/service, as like many strong competitors service.
You could make it a bit more specific, emphasizing affordability, thus targeting "cheap holydays on the moon".

okay, so your themes would be holydays and moon. Of course you´d go for appropriate links, but how about the pyramid?
Starting with a moon theme, you could have some pages about the moon in general, history, general information..., that would make second level of the pyramid.
Also on this second level you could have something on holydays in general.
But what next? How could you go for a next level specifying things in the direction of holydays on the moon?

Or to make this more open, what is the best way to implement themes in a small site that tries to sell holydays on the moon, and nothing else?

Ideas?

[rcjordan]

How did you know I do holidays on the moon, heini? My site:

moonholidays.com/
moonholidays.com/history
moonholidays.com/history/plantations
moonholidays.com/history/civilwar
moonholidays.com/weather
moonholidays.com/attractions
moonholidays.com/attractions/cratertours
moonholidays.com/attractions/darkside
moonholidays.com/nearbyplanets

>Or to make this more open, what is the best way to implement themes in a small site that tries to sell holydays on the moon, and nothing else?

I encompass the theme with anything that could be remotely related... particularly if it's a low maintenance item like history.

[heini]

Oh s**t, I knew competition was strong, but I didn´t know I had to run against you, rc...
I have a secret weapon though: I was able to get The Legendary Stardust Cowboy´s "Fly Me to the Moon" as a title music... That will blow my customer´s minds!
Plus, as if this wasn´t enough, I will have the Alien Sexfiends "ESP-Trip to the Moon"!

[paynt]

Using rc’s analysis I, of course, would turn them into canonicals and thus…

moonholidays.com/
history.moonholidays.com
history.moonholidays.com/plantations
history.moonholidays.com/civilwar
weather.moonholidays.com/
attractions.moonholidays.com/
attractions.moonholidays.com/cratertours
attractions.moonholidays.com/darkside
nearbyplanets.moonholidays.com/

[Slade]

Supposing they wanted to remap their site to the canonicals...

What do you do with the old links to get them pointing to the right place without screwing up your rankings?

[paynt]

I usually do not disturb exisiting pages and simply create new ones with valuable and unique content. If at some point I see a page is no longer indexed or the new pages beat out in rank, etc the exisiting page, I might then remove the older page.

[heini]

Paynt, glad you came in to help! Was absolutely sure you´d recommend su.. err: canonicals.
Okay, what should I put in my
moonholidays.com/
directory? An "home" page (you know, the usual stuff: laughing kiddies in those funky moonmobiles, craterdances etc) of course, what else? Remember, it´s supposed to be a rather small effective site.

And which pages do you suggest to be the high ranking pages for my phrase "Holydays on the Moon"?
In Brett´s pyramid it´s the lowest level pages that are supposed to be the highriders, he marked them with "$". So which of my pages will make it to #1 on Google, putting rc´s page to a shameful second best in the moon-holydays biz?

[NFFC]

heini here's another view.

On a small site I would forget about sub domains, concentrate on the root level pages and move anything that is even slightly off theme out into to directories.

>so your themes would be holydays and moon

I would stick to one theme, you have to choose.

Alternatively forget themes and go super focused, "holydays on the moon" could be the only thing you rank for but you could rank very well.

[heini]

>go super focused, "holydays on the moon" could be the only thing you rank for but you could rank very well.

Thanks for the input NFFC. Ranking very well for "Holydays on the Moon" is exactly what I´m trying to do, it´s the product the site is supposed to sell. It would be useless and even stupid to go for top positions for "holydays" or "moon".
So this approach would mean to optimize each page in the root level to this phrase, crosslink them, add inbound quality links and wham, here you are?

Is this a way to go with themebased engines?

[paynt]

Heini, I am so glad you gave us a light-hearted yet serious commercial project to work on. I simply could not pass on the chance to plug my passion for, err…. canonicals.

If I had a moonholidays.com site to work with the first thing I would determine was what specifically I was going to be covering for the site in its entirety. I like to turn my main index page into an intro of what’s in store for the rest of the site and introduce my canonicals with a brief yet descriptive few sentences of relevant content, linked of course. This also acts to motivate the spiders to plunge forward and establishes what the ‘theme’ of my site is to be. Before moving too quickly forward with implementing the plan I play around with the layout and navigation of the site. I determine what I am going to use for my keywords for each page and I develop a linking sentence or two that I can use repetitively to refer to the page [with those perfect keywords in the anchor text].

It’s also important of course that the main page is attractive and sells the idea of moving forward into the site. Tempting, teasing and attractive is nice, especially if you are selling trips to the moon. The most important key to establishing this main index page is that it is all about what the site is about and that you don’t detour from the plan you lay out here.

Each canonical main index page then becomes all about that in the same but more focused way that we’ve established on our main index page. So, if we have "Holydays on the Moon" and our canonical is named holiday.moonholidays.com then we’ll be introducing here what we’re a specifically covering in this section. We will also tie into specifically related canonical directory pages that relate. This is where it gets tricky and we need to be careful that we stay on theme. We may want to report on ‘Christmas holiday on the moon’ with our holiday.moonholidays.com/Christmas/ page and tie it into the event.moonholidays.com/Christmas page. The holiday.moonholidays.com/Christmas/ page describes the Christmas packages we offer and the event.moonholidays.com/Christmas/ page describes specific planned events for the Christmas holidays. In fact we will probably take it one level further with specific Christmas holiday moon packages as in

holiday.moonholidays.com/Christmas/package-1/
holiday.moonholidays.com/Christmas/ package-2/
holiday.moonholidays.com/Christmas/ package-3/

This is where we would really go for the sale and push heavy on the specific product offered.

holiday.moonholidays.com/Christmas/package-1/ would then tie into specific events that will happen during that particular time period that is offered by the holiday package.
event.moonholidays.com/Christmas/choir/
event.moonholidays.com/Christmas/dance/
event.moonholidays.com/Christmas/play/

The fun then becomes finding linking partners for each f the canonicals and of course the main page of the site plus every little directory page I can round up a good link to.

I hope I explained this so it makes enough sense to follow. I really needed something to get my mind around today and push me back into the world of work that I love, thank you.

I'm always curious as to others handle establishing their themes. I hope others weigh in with their ideas.

[rcjordan]

(I'll note that canonicals makes it harder for some to see the pyramid structure, but it's still there.)

>putting rc´s page to a shameful second best in the moon-holydays biz?
>
Not a chance! But I'll need to post a disclaimer stating that while you may think you're going up against a small site, I don't just stop at the moon. But, as you'll see, I'm a big believer in pyramids.

asteroidholidays.com/
asteroidholidays.com/history
asteroidholidays.com/history/plantations
asteroidholidays.com/history/civilwar
asteroidholidays.com/weather
asteroidholidays.com/attractions
asteroidholidays.com/attractions/cratertours
asteroidholidays.com/attractions/darkside
asteroidholidays.com/nearbyplanets01

mercuryholidays.com/
etc.

venusholidays.com/
etc.

earthholidays.com/
etc

And, while these are freestanding sites, they are actually (structurally speaking) the third level of a larger pyramid. The second level is

nearbyplanets.com
nearbyplanets01.com
nearbyplanets02.com
nearbyplanets03.com

At the top level, there is
planets.com

AND, planets.com has a few heavy-duty sister sites that parallel it's basic theme but with entirely different content. These sister sites are also built as a pyramid, and all of these sites cross-link at very deep levels, i.e., content hallways.

>go super focused, "holydays on the moon" could be the only thing you rank for but you could rank very well.

What's interesting to note is the difference in approach. NFFC is fishing for focused, high-conversion traffic with a minnow net. I dredge with a trawler. Both work, though my themed network approach doesn't work well for those developing a single site for a client, it's more for publishers. There's a lot of peripheral traffic that's never going to convert, but there's also a small -but steady- percentage that will.

Also, for me, the money-level is the third level within the pyramid.

[heini]

awed and speechless

(Gotta get hold of universe.com somehow...paralell universes...hmmm back to the drawing board)

[heini]

After some thorough consideration I decided to go for "universe holydays" later. Let rc have the world, I take the moon. In other words: will stick to the rowboat rather than hire and man a trawler.
Paynt, thanks for superb analysis and some good ideas, especially the choir is appealing. But just like rc you seem to have a tendency to thinking on a large scale. The structure you suggest is undoubtedly in the long run a very valuable approach. But you know how things are: I have chartered those spacecrafts, with every second seat still vacant: I need to set up a small higly targeted site immeadiately. Not more than 10-15 pages max.
So, should I be heading in the direction NFFC pointed me to ("forget themes"), or is there a way to implement themes nevertheless?

[paynt]

Sure you can implement themes by just staying on focus and not diverting from your topic. Allow each page to encompass the breadth of the subject. You can always focus in as time and finances permit. You don’t have to use canonicals either and can in fact add them later if you desire.

If ‘Holidays on the Moon’ is your theme it should be really easy to divide your pages to encompass that topic. Stay away from ‘History of the Moon’ unless that’s one of the holiday packages as in
moonholidays.com/history/package1

What I would do though is talk not about the history of the moon but rather the ‘History of the Moon Holiday Packages’ and then break out into the individual packages as you have them to sell. This is effective even if you only have one package to sell. This way if you want to later add events you could have
moonholidays.com/history/event1/,
which is perhaps a play about the first moon landing.

You’ll find many folks coming to you through these third and second level pages, particularly if they are looking for ‘History of the Moon Holiday Packages’ or ‘History of the Moon Holiday Events’.

They thing you are remembering when developing a structure such as this is the focus of the string and that it flows from each page into the page beneath it. You wouldn’t suddenly create a page called
moonholidays.com/history/autos/.
That would simply not make sense and would certainly mess with your themes.