Structuring your Blog Just Right for SEO

May 12, 2010 - Last Modified: March 28, 2013 by Tola

I recently started blogging a few months ago from a background in SEO and it’s always fascinating to see and read blogs which talk about SEO and general blogging. Someone once said that the home page of a website/blog is like a real estate; a very rich real estate and SEO has a lot to do with making the best out of that real estate.

Today I’m going to share with you some of my favourite tips to help your real estate and structure your blog better. In the long run this article should help with SEO for your blog and also reduce your bounce rate if done right.

Put Your Best foot forward

One of the first things I’ve noticed about some blogs is they don’t give brief summaries for their posts. I’ve thought about this and tried to see if there was any advantage towards having the full article published on your home page, as opposed to say, the first paragraph, with maybe a catchy image. I’ll love for some who knows of an advantage to let me know, but in the mean time, I’ll talk about why it is a disadvantage from an SEO and User Experience POV. When you publish the complete 500-800 words on your front page:

What’s left for your older posts? Especially if they’re long posts?
That means you’re going to end up having a pretty long home page. Not very cool.
Your users are going to have to scroll for a pretty long time to get to the next post, and the next and the next… They might just get tired and leave.
Most likely in each post you’ll have a number of links. This doesn’t take into consideration your header links, side links and your footer links. When we add all the links together you will have lots of links on the first page, making it harder for the crawler to go through and index relevant inner pages.

Attractive Home page

Your home page should be attractive, you don’t want to scare a newbie away from your website with extremely long posts. Lure them in with short but appealing summaries which make them click on the full article. Sometimes the first post might not be for them, then they can have another quick summary of your other posts. Some websites put a couple of their most recent posts on their home page then include the most popular posts on the home page. You’r most popular post could be the ones with the highest interaction (comments) or highest view, which ever you prefer.

Learn how to Categorize

If you’re homepage is actually a landing page that means it’s like a gateway, right? A gateway into your website. Now this might explain why you want to put all your content on the first page but you just might end up scaring everyone away if you do that. However, if you categorize your content right, with proper tagging and labeling you don’t have to worry too much about putting everything up on the front page. Proper categorizing helps to put the best foot forward and ensure you only put up the most relevant posts on your home page. It will save people leaving your blog in frustration when they’re looking for something specifically. If it’s categorized right then it’s just like a well organised library…

What are yours?

These are some of my favorite SEO tips for structuring a site. What are yours? Do you put your full content up on home page? The good thing about SEO is once you know the basics everything else is down to opinion and trials. Has it been more beneficial for you to put up your full content on your homepage or not? Please lets know your thoughts 🙂

Image credit: All in a raw

About Tola

Follow @Tola_SEO

I'm an SEO Consultant. That's what I do for a living but at night I'm a blogger. I think it's the best of both worlds. I use my personal SEO blog to test my newly acquired SEO and blogging skills and then I officially implement it. What more could a girl ask for? When I have time for other things, I love singing, reading frictional novels and watching blockbuster Movies...

{ 44 Responses }

Asad says:

I have two blogs and in both blogs i use post summaries to avoid duplicate content and better navigation.Your readers are multidimensional so your blog design should be such that readers can navigate easily to their favorite articles.
- Tola says:
  
  I agree with you on that Asad. Especially the part on designing for your readers. Although that can get a little complicated when some readers actually prefer the full summary as opposed to excerpts. In a situation like that, it's usually best to go with your gut (and avoid duplicate content). :)
James Neil says:

I saw your blog mentioned by Andy talking up his new release of CommentLuv so I thought I'd pop over and see how a WP 2.9 blog was using the new version CommentLuv. Not bad!
- Hesham says:
  
  Welcome to our blog, and thanks to Andy for the mention!
Jean says:

Tola, I appreciated your article. The short summaries vs. full posts question is one I have not quite settled. I've toyed with the idea of switching to short summaries, but when I'm reading other food blogs I really enjoy seeing the full posts. So I continue with the full posts. If you get a chance to look at my blog and care to offer an opinion, please do.
- Tola says:
  
  Hi Jean, Thanks for the comment. If you personally prefer full posts then that's what you prefer. You could have a word with some of your readers and find out what they prefer. I had a look at your website and it's pretty cool, but if i were you, I'll leave the recipe out of the post and the introductions would be the short summary. But its down to you and your readers... Hope that helps! :)
  - Jean says:
    
    Thank you, Tola. I just might give that a try. But first I need to figure out HOW! You see, I can cook up a storm, but I know next to nothing about techie stuff and am just figuring all this out as I go along.
    - Tola says:
      
      I just sent you an email, lemme know if you got it, cos its coming back on my end as a failed delivery...
      - Jean says:
        
        Just received the "Your comment has a new reply" email, that's all.
- Tola says:
  
  That's fine, I'll just reply here then. I know what you mean about learning day by day... You use Blogger right? In the section used for editing your post, use the button that has a page cut in two image on it, when you hover on the button it says 'insert jump break'. It's the one right after the 'Add Video' button and before the alignment button. Where ever you want the break to start you put the text marker there and press the button. That should do it. :)
  - Jean says:
    
    Thanks, Tola! I'll give that a try.
Jason Jumat says:

Tola . . . I guess I'm guilty. The theme I use came with settings that keeps all the posts in full on my home page of my blog. I actually realized myself it's not so appealing, so you're right most people will pick this up. Thank you for this advice. I don't think I can go wrong by dressing (absolutely not overdressing!) my blog.
- Tola says:
  
  Thanks for the feedback Jason. And yes, I really don't think you could go wrong by dressiing you blog. I guess it's just down to finding the right balance for yourself and your readers...
Sachin says:

I've had different approaches over the years. The first one was to propose the latest post in full text on the front page and the other posts had summaries listed underneath. After working a lot on usability on the site, I cleared away all unnecessary links in my blogroll, threw in a defined number of post excerpts and worked a lot on the use of H tags (I even wrote and article on that) to help readers quickly scan the front page and chose whatever article catching their attention. .-= NEW from Sachin @ Web Design Mauritius´s last blog ..You should be (over-) using the H (heading) tags. =-.
- Tola says:
  
  That sounds like a pretty good approach to me Sachin. I think one of the most important things is that your users are happy with it. I definitely like the idea of using the H tags for easy scanning too. Thanks!
Dennis Edell says:

Put Your Best foot forward - great tip here. The flip side would be to make sure it is full in the feed. :) .-= NEW from Dennis Edell @ Direct Sales Marketing´s last blog ..Warning: 8 Posts Coming Back to Back =-.
- Tola says:
  
  Thanks for the comment Dennis. Thats true, full story in the feed, I learnt that the hard way, lol...
chandan says:

Hi Tola interesting idea. But my opinion is that we have to try to put as less as javascript code or picture on homepage as It take more loading time of our blog, I think it also help for SEO if our blog load fast. .-= NEW from chandan@work at home blog´s last blog ..7 Best Work At Home Marketplace For Freelancer =-.
- Tola says:
  
  Thanks for the comment, Chandan. I definitely agree with the reducing the javascript requests, or only call them when necessary to help page speed, but not too sure about the images. Images can be a good source of traffic to your website like John mentioned in the previous comment. You just have to optimise your images so they don't end up being too large and taking too long to download...
John Paul says:

Nice tips Tola. I would add to SEO your images as much as possible. You can add keywords to your alt: tag and also add keywords to the images file name. I agree that design helps.. let's you stand out.. .-= NEW from John Paul@Make Money Every Day´s last blog ..Breaking Into The Top 20 Internet Marketers Online With No List =-.
- Tola says:
  
  Thanks for that John. Yeah, using alt tags for your images is really handy as well. Just so annoying that with blogger you have to manually do it yourself. The plans of Blogspot... :(
  - John Paul says:
    
    Your welcome. Yea that would take a lil work.. but I have noticed I been getting more and more traffic from Google Images,.. so for me worth the effort.. but still annoying :) .-= NEW from John Paul@Make Money With A Blog´s last blog ..Breaking Into The Top 20 Internet Marketers Online With No List =-.
bbrian017 says:

Having a nice design is always important. I also like to have a fast loading website. I just started using a new theme on my personal blog from Keller Hawthorne and I'm loving it. I like to have my content neatly laid out as I'm a freak when it comes to stuff like that. I pretty much agree with your entire post we have a lot in common when it comes to the structure of our blogs. .-= NEW from bbrian017´s last blog ..The Blog Engage 45 day SEO keyword Challenge =-.
- Tola says:
  
  Thanks for the comment Brian. I guess that's where compromising comes in though. The more stuff you add to your homepage the slower it becomes... But there are so many things we 'think' we need... Clean and simple is always good though!
Dana says:

Honestly, I learn to categorize my blog post on fly and still learning it. I think that's why my blog category still need to be perfected so can become perfect guidance. .-= NEW from Dana @ Blogging Tips Blog´s last blog ..The Simple Blogging Tips: Be Personal, Be Unique, Be Diffrent, Be Success =-.
- Tola says:
  
  I know what you mean Dana. You know what you're supposed to do but actually getting around to doing it can be a real pain! Especially when there so much work ahead, going back seems like a waste... Thanks for the comment.
Agent Deepak says:

Hey Tola, nice and useful article but your article do not seem much to be focused on SEO. I rather get the feeling that we have to make our blog and its homepage more user friendly. Your post looks more inclined towards designing. .-= NEW from Agent Deepak@Blogging. Marketing & Success´s last blog ..Blog Launch Giveaway Winner Announced =-.
- Tola says:
  
  Thanks for the comment Deepak. The way I see it, SEO and User Experience go hand in hand. What's the point in having a website with a high bounce rate, or one no body would recommend? That's one of the reasons I put the term 'structure' in the title. A lot of the time it comes down to the look and feel of the website, that's one of the foundation of SEO, in my opinion. Also, when I wrote this post I decided not to go too SEO-focused as most readers are into blogging. If you're looking for more information on SEO then please feel free to visit my SEO blog :D
  - Tola says:
    
    Oops, I meant my blog, the other was wrong. Sorry...
  - Agent Deepak says:
    
    I myself believe that SEO and user experience should go hand to hand. And I completely understand your point. I just wanted to tell that your post is more design centric than SEO. I expected a little SEO centric post. Anyways good work with the post. .-= NEW from Agent Deepak@Blogging. Marketing & Success´s last blog ..Blog Launch Giveaway Winner Announced =-.
    - Tola says:
      
      Thanks n duly noted Deepak, will take the titling into more consideration next time :)
Karan Singhal says:

I think it's important to have an attractive homepage, especially if that is an important page in your SEO campaign and if you sell a product. Your homepage is your chance to lure a visitor into doing what you want them to do, whether it's clicking on an ad or making a purchase. .-= NEW from Karan Singhal @ Trafficke SEO Consulting Firm´s last blog ..3 Steps To Keyword Research Success =-.
- Tola says:
  
  Thanks for the comment Karan. Yes an attractive homepage helps a lot, especially if you're trying to sell something. I think you just might get away with it if you're just blogging around but you definitely won't get any brownie points for an unattractive homepage.
  - Karan Singhal says:
    
    Yeah - I really hate how by default Wordpress's homepage has full posts instead of excerpt/summaries. Little by little, just makes it harder for bloggers like us. :/ .-= NEW from Karan Singhal @ Trafficke SEO Consulting Firm´s last blog ..Writing Tweetworthy Content =-.
Biodun says:

Good points, i will also add that having an attractive headline is also great way to structure your blog. A catchy title will get more people to read your article, most people will not read the article if the title is drab and boring. Make your title clear about what your article is about, if you adding keywords to your title, choose good keywords to use as "Keywords are very important on the web". .-= NEW from Biodun @ UK webmaster forum´s last blog ..Unemployment in UK hits 2.5 million =-.
- Tola says:
  
  Thats very true Biodun, catchy titles and good keywords go a very long way. Thanks for the comment..
aleshna says:

it would be nice if your content and revising the summary before submitting it to bookmarking sites.
- Tola says:
  
  Thanks for the comment aleshna. I've never really thought too much about this in the past but now that you guys are bringing it up, its something I'll always try to remember. Thanks for that.
David Leonhardt says:

There is actually an advantage to having a summary, even if you have the whole post on your home page. The advantage is that when people submit your post to social bookmarking sites are reference it anywhere, their job is made easy by just cutting and pasting the summary. Very often, a good lead-in is not a good summary (this post is a fine example of that). See how this site http://www.itbusiness.ca/it/client/en/home/news.asp?id=57558 does it? That has made it easy for me, as I often submit their material to http://www.zoomit.ca . Would I submit their material as often if there was no convenient summary? Maybe not, hard to say for sure. .-= NEW from David Leonhardt´s last blog ..White Paper - why small business needs SEO =-.
- Hesham says:
  
  This is good example David, although editing the summary while submitting to bookmarks sites will give more SEO power to the submitted articles! Take a look to this one : How to Create a Unique Content from only One Article, I hope you find this useful, and thanks a lot for sharing our articles ;)
  - David Leonhardt says:
    
    I agree, that's a good point. It works well if you are always submitting your own material. If you have a fairly strong readership, though, it's best to let them submit stuff, too. Anything that encourages this, including a summary, can be beneficial. .-= NEW from David Leonhardt´s last blog ..White Paper - why small business needs SEO =-.
    - Tola says:
      
      Thanks for the comment David and Hesham. I definitely see where you're coming from on both counts. Although I'm inclined to say sometimes your type of summary depends on what you're writing about/for, like Hesham said. But I know I still have a way to go with learning the balance, so I'll work on that. Thanks!

Structuring your Blog Just Right for SEO

Put Your Best foot forward

Attractive Home page

Learn how to Categorize

What are yours?

About Tola

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Put Your Best foot forward

Attractive Home page

Learn how to Categorize

What are yours?

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