The next step is structuring our site so we can start creating content for our target keywords.
The mistake I see a lot of SEOs make when it comes to their website structure is they don’t think big enough. For e.g: Their target keyword is “college scholarships” then they will create an SEO-optimized page about college scholarships and start building links from there.
The way I like my website structured is to take a more macro-level / zoomed out view.
I like to think of it from the customers’ point of view. Instead of targeting college scholarships, I like to think of the why or the user intent on searching for college scholarships.
Why are users searching for scholarships? In this case, it would either be:
- Getting free money for college
- Saving money on college tuition
What I would do is to create 2 pages: How to get free money for college, and saving money on college tuition.
(Optional step) If we are targeting a really huge industry then we might want to add another level like:
- College tuition (where we will talk everything about college tuition like scholarships, grants, student loans, net price, etc).
- Saving money (where we will talk everything about saving money which includes paying for college).
Then in each of these 2 pages, there will be a link to the scholarship page.
The site structure would look something like this:
- Home > College Tuition > Free money > Scholarships
- Home > College Tuition > Save money > Scholarships
Instead of just:
- Home > Scholarships
Why did I choose to go with this structure?
Let’s say we got 100 links pointing to our website and the structure is this:
- Home > Scholarships
Assuming, we got no links on the page, the link juice will only be flowing to the Home page and the Scholarships page.
On the other hand, if we got a structure like this:
- Home > College Tuition > Free money > Scholarships
- Home > College Tuition > Save money > Scholarships
Not only will we get the link juice flowing into Home and Scholarships, College Tuition, Get Free Money For College, and Save Money will all get the link juice and rank for keywords that are relevant to the page.