When you set up your website it is a really good idea to pre-plan the “category” structure with your content.
If you look to the right there is a column of clickable links. The top half are “categories” when you click on them they go to a list of all the “content” pages that are filed under that particular category.
It is suggested that attracting online traffic to your website the minimum number of informative pages/posts should be 20 – 25.
The more the merrier.
Boiled down it means; five categories with 4 to 5 articles in each.
Keyword Researching Categories
Using the Google Keyword Tool to find good keywords to write your topics on as well as selecting and naming the individual categories helps the search engines index you appropriately, as well as allowing your visitors easy navigation.
Go through your keyword list and divide them in most likely groupings being careful not to highlight the same keyword multiple times in multiple places.
So your basic website setup will be your home page, category pages, and articles or content posts/ pages.
Basically each category would be one particular branch of your business.
For example if you had a hairdressing website your categories could be:
Short Hairstyles
Permanents
Long Hairstyles
Hair Colours
Famous Haircuts
Each of those could have 4 or 5 articles in each.
An example of articles you can write under the category “Short Hairstyles”:
Short Hairstyles for This Year
Wedding Hairstyles
Popular Short Hair
Wash and Go Short Hair
Short Hair for Curls
etc.
So the category link would produce all the articles uniquely written for that. Reinforcing to the search engines the purpose of your website so when people search for a “hairdresser” your chances increase that your website will be found.
This is basic on-page SEO
You can link to these articles individually from the home page, or to the category pages, or both.
The big SEO clue I am giving you here is – on a small site, one targeted keyword/page.
How to Structure Category Keywords?
Generally you search the keywords and break them down into popularity or number of searches. Using the top searched keyword terms as your categories and the lower volume search terms as keywords to target in your articles or posts.
Another little trick to help you compete is by targeting keyword terms with lower competition and still a high search volume. As well you can target “long tail” keywords. These are more sentences and phrases.
Applying smart keyword selection and structure to your website will give you a huge advantage over your local business competitor.
