One of the keys to Search Engine Optimization is organizing your website so that it gives your visitors a great experience, while making it usable for search engines. At OffWhite, we talk about information mapping, creating a logical overview of your business (who you are, products, services and more). The result of an OffWhite website information mapping project becomes your site architecture – how each page on your website interacts with every other page. It's the way people and search engines navigate your website, and we want it to be easy for both humans and search engine bots to find what they are looking for. The way your website's navigation is set up has a huge impact on which of your pages and keywords rank on search engines. Pages that have lots of internal pages linking to them are easy for visitors and search engines to find, have high internal link popularity scores, and give your site a better chance of ranking on competitive keywords. There is a hierarchy to the link popularity of pages on your website, starting with your home page.

1. Typically, every page on your website has a link back to the home page, making it the most popular page on your website. You can take advantage of this link popularity to get higher rankings when you optimize your home page for general and highly competitive keywords.
    
2. Next, top-level pages (pages that appear in global navigation bars) are ideal for optimization since there are many opportunities for product or service category listings and quick links to information found deeper in the site. These pages should be optimized for fairly competitive keywords pertaining to the website section.
    
3. The next level of website hierarchy is typically the product or service pages. These pages can be optimized for the names of the products and services, and keywords should be more specific and long tail.
    
4. The final level of your website navigation is made up of additional content from blogs, news articles, videos, etc. This information helps you establish your expertise and credibility, and often generates external links. These pages are good at bringing in search engine traffic from long-tail keywords.

To learn more, or to set up a meeting to discuss your website architecture, contact Jane Cirigliano at OffWhite.