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Using Content Page Guide Optimization

Posted by Michael Martinez on November 11, 2007 in Content Theory

If you could collect all your page titles, meta descriptions, and keywords meta tags into one place and organize them as directory-style listings to your content, would you do that?

Most people would hesitate to do just that but Google does something like that in quite a few places. They provide descriptive link guides to their internal content.

So if it’s good enough for Google, why should it not be good enough for you?

A descriptive guide to page content offers some usability advantages combined with obvious search engine optimization benefits. More importantly, because you don’t want to create endlessly scrolling pages if you create such a content-rich guide you’ll think long and hard before putting something less important into the list.

Descriptive content guides offer one possible solution to the problem Google has created by devaluing Supplemental Results Pages in its search results. As matters stand now, if someone performs a site: search on your site, any highly relevant Supplemental Index pages will be passed over for less relevant pages that are found in the Main Web Index.

That doesn’t do you or your visitors any good but if you want to help your visitors in spite of Google’s Web Apartheid you can point enough links to your content-rich page guides to ensure they have a good chance of ranking well in site: queries.

You can also provide your visitors with a detailed introduction to your targeted content sections. In 25 words or less, you can describe each page in a section in a nicely laid out matrix that shows your visitors a large selection of pages at a glance.

While this tends to separate your visitors from your most relevant content by one additional click, it offers you the opportunity to create internal hubs that visitors may come back to as they explore your content. You can also capitalize on the additional linkage you provide yourself (a little extra anchor text pointed at pages that are in the Main Web Index may help in competitive queries).

The ancient art of composing directory-style entries has largely gone underground as people have resorted to mass-producing Web content through CMS-based templates. If you add a Content Page Guide to your site (or one section of it) you at least get to customize some of the information about your pages without having to fight with the CMS or the template limitations.

There was indeed a time when Yahoo! and Looksmart were the leaders of directory-based search, driving millions of referrals across the Web every month. Writing directory listings for those and other directories that were useful, informative, and acceptable to the editorial staffs was a critical skill for search success.

In a typical directory environment you have only four elements to optimize: your listing title (often limited to 10 or 15 words), your listing description (usually 25-50 words), your actual page URL, and your category name (keywords).

You can structure your content-rich page guides to utilize at least the same four elements, but you don’t have to strangle your presentation with a single column directory-style presentation.

For a large content site, Page Guides may be exactly what you need to engage your visitors in active browsing. They can use the search tools you provide (or major search engines if they know how to do site searches) but you can use Page Guides to shape the choices your visitors make.

The 25-50 words you include in each listing description need to be as compelling and interesting as the words you provide for your meta descriptions, your directory submissions, and your pay-per-click advertising. But they should also be informative and easy-to-read, concise blocks of text.

Each listing should be as effective as a bouquet picture on a florist site. Think of how you can see the various flowers and vases the florist offers, so you click on the image you feel is more relevant to your search to learn more. You may have to click on several pictures to find just the bouquet you want to order.

I have used Page Guides in various forms throughout the years. I find they convert well when people find them. The Page Guides are more likely to be found for some queries than the more relevant, highly detailed, very informative content they link to. While that remains a failing of the search engines (particularly Google), it’s not a failing you have to live with.

If your content is important enough to create it’s important enough to be found and you don’t have to wait around for Google or any other search engine to figure out the content is there. You can help tell search engines and visitors alike more about your site through custom page guides.