Your website’s nav­i­ga­tion struc­ture and inbound link pro­file play an impor­tant part in your site’s abil­i­ty to be found in the search results. Google eval­u­ates the author­i­ty of your web­site in part by the qual­i­ty of the links point­ing to your site. The more rel­e­vant sites that point to your con­tent, the more pop­u­lar and author­i­ta­tive you must be, at least in the­o­ry. And on your site, the way your links are struc­tured can help both the search engines and your users dis­cov­er con­tent with ease.

Build­ing, main­tain­ing, and grow­ing links to your brand’s site all con­tribute to the suc­cess of your organ­ic search efforts. Let’s look at three key phas­es and how they con­tribute to a win­ning link build­ing strat­e­gy.

Phase 1: Build – A Strong Website Navigation Structure

When you think about your site as a set of doc­u­ments, you can start think­ing about how to best orga­nize those doc­u­ments in a way that groups like top­ics togeth­er – just as you would in say, your computer’s file fold­ers. Except on your web­site, these fold­ers are called direc­to­ries, and they rep­re­sent the dif­fer­ent sub­ject themes on your site, like your ser­vices, prod­ucts, or infor­ma­tion about top­ics that mat­ter to your busi­ness. These direc­to­ries are cre­at­ed through your web­site nav­i­ga­tion – link­ing sim­i­lar pages togeth­er. Direc­to­ries are impor­tant to orga­nize for a cou­ple of rea­sons; when the direc­to­ries and their URLs are orga­nized well:

• It makes it eas­i­er for search engines to crawl and under­stand the con­tent on your site. This way, you’re effec­tive­ly build­ing mini-libraries of con­tent on a sub­ject, and can become an author­i­ty on it.
• Your vis­i­tors can nav­i­gate through your site with ease, find­ing the infor­ma­tion they need faster.

Bot­tom line: When you orga­nize your website’s doc­u­ments using easy-to-read, sim­ple URLs that are linked togeth­er in a direc­to­ry, you’re going to improve the expe­ri­ence for search engines and web­site vis­i­tors. So, what does that look like, exact­ly? Sim­ple URL names and cohe­sive URL struc­ture, like: www.puppyfashion.com (home page) www.puppyfashion.com/sweaters (sweater direc­to­ry) www.puppyfashion.com/sweaters/holiday (hol­i­day sweaters) www.puppyfashion.com/sweaters/star-wars (Star Wars sweaters) www.puppyfashion.com/sweaters/cashmere (cash­mere sweaters) Remem­ber that you can also link like-pages togeth­er across direc­to­ries when rel­e­vant. One exam­ple would be a link from a post on puppyfashion.com/blog about hol­i­day-themed pup­py sweaters to the puppyfashion.com/sweaters/holiday page.

Phase 2: Maintain – Discovering & Fixing Links

Build­ing the foun­da­tion is an excel­lent first step, but it’s not enough to “set it and for­get it.” Your web­site needs tend­ing just like a gar­den to keep it healthy. Even though a great direc­to­ry struc­ture helps the search engines and users bet­ter dis­cov­er the con­tent on your site, tak­ing extra steps to improve that expe­ri­ence is key. Here are a cou­ple ways to ensure that.

Finding & Fixing Broken Links

A bro­ken link – or 404 (page not found) can be quite annoy­ing to your web­site vis­i­tors. Rou­tine (week­ly or month­ly) main­te­nance of bro­ken links is impor­tant to ensur­ing users don’t leave your site. Run tools to iden­ti­fy and fix those you can. Some­times this includes imple­ment­ing a 301 redi­rect to the best page, oth­er times, sim­ply hav­ing a cus­tom-designed 404 page that gives your vis­i­tors oth­er options they can nav­i­gate to can keep them on your site longer.

Sitemaps & Site Maps

No, that’s not a typo – those are two dis­tinct ways that search engines and users can dis­cov­er more of your website’s con­tent. An XML Sitemap is for the search engines to get a bet­ter pic­ture of how your site is orga­nized and helps the search engines bet­ter crawl the con­tent. An HTML site map is a page on your site that lists all the main sec­tions and links with­in your site in an orga­nized man­ner. This is your vis­i­tors’ road map if and when they are feel­ing lost. It’s impor­tant to keep this updat­ed as changes are made to your site to avoid bro­ken links.

Phase 3: Grow – Increasing Link Volume & Value

Ever since Google Pen­guin hit the scene, “link build­ing” has become a dirty word. But that’s just seman­tics – build­ing the vol­ume and val­ue of links is still an impor­tant sig­nal to Google that your site is a rel­e­vant and pop­u­lar choice. What’s no longer in vogue is the type of link build­ing that works to arti­fi­cial­ly inflate rank­ings. Think: buy­ing links. What’s more, bad link build­ing often leaves sites with a link pro­file that con­sists of inbound links from oth­er sites that aren’t rel­e­vant to your indus­try or top­ic, and that’s a red flag to search engines. While there’s still debate about what types of links mat­ter most, a laun­dry list def­i­nite­ly exists of what the indus­try believes to be bad links and bad link-build­ing prac­tices. Pen­guin cat­a­pult­ed brands into a fren­zy of link prun­ing – get­ting rid of those links that could be per­ceived by Pen­guin as low qual­i­ty, and ush­ered brands into a new era of what it meant to earn links the smart way. Today, brands work to grow their link pro­file in a way that allows their sites to thrive in the face of any algo­rithm or penal­ty that the search engines may throw at them.