SEO and User Experience Pt 2: Themed Content & Linking Structure

in Search Engine Optimization,Top Articles

In the part 1 of this SEO and user experience series I talked about several things from a basic overview of how to provide a good user experience while improving SEO to the 3 big factors in Google User Experience SEO:

High Quality, Unique, Themed Content
Internal Linking
Outbound Linking

Now let’s more thoroughly examine the three core concepts of this process that I mentioned in the previous post. This is some of the most powerful hands on activities you can spend your time on if you want to grab those top 10 spots in Google and drive more traffic to your site.

#1 – High Quality, Unique, Themed Content

We see great value in high quality, unique content. This is one big way to provide a good user experience. Simply having content that doesn’t suck. That’s a simple concept, but all too many seem to get it wrong.

That’s obvious, but what about the not so obvious – especially terms like Latent Semantic Indexing and themed content. Check this out. If you want to super-optimize a piece of content for Google, you need to cover 3 core aspects in combined circular motion. I call this…

Combined Circular SEO

People
Topics
Events

These three things are what makes Google spin. Think about it. Each of these is associated with each other in a web of multiple combinations.

Here’s an example:

We recently posted an interview (event) with searh engine marketing expert, Dr. Glenn Livingston and Alex Goad (people) on the topic of Adwords. Just to prove something quickly. If you go to Google and search for “Glenn Livingston Interview” (without quotes) you’ll see that we rank #1 for the post:

drglennlivingstoninterviewgoogle SEO and User Experience Pt 2: Themed Content & Linking Structure

Dr. Glenn Livingston Interview Google Search Engine Results

Not a super competitive keyword, but I’ve seen this repeated again and again. It’s a solid theory, backed up by multiple data. Again, this is just one example, and you will see more detail on this matter in a future post (perhaps you should subscribe to the feed?)

You’ll notice that there’s also a double listing which you’ll see again later in this post. Basically what’s happening is because we have two high quality, themed articles on Glenn Google has given not just the first, but the second spot as well. This is because we’ve ultimately helped Google achieve it’s core values of providing relevancy and a Google user experience.

The point is to think in terms of Google. Think how Google thinks and behaves if you want to improve your SEO. Because that’s probably the most solid data is ever going to give you. Help them provide a good user experience for their visitor, and Google will reward you by indexing more of your pages, higher.

What’s cool is by following this, you provide an excellent user experience in terms of relevancy, and you also set yourself up for the next step in terms of being able to do relevant internal and external linking in your content. Which brings us to…

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Connecting Circular SEO

Google is all about connections. They’re constantly connecting people to what they want millions of times a day. Obviously links play a big role in that so achieving a good linking structure is paramount to your success in the search engines and Google specifically.

Of course building backlinks is important, but what I’m talking about here is an internal and outbound linking structure that is super optimize for the search engines. And it all starts with the first aspect, high quality themed content. This allows you to achieve a good internal linking structure…

#2 – Internal Link Structuring

If someone clicks a link in one of the articles here, and they are taken to something completely irrelevant, first we lose their trust, and second they leave and never come back.

Think of it this way. Any link you place in any article should be to enhance and improve the user’s experience. Remember, relevancy. So think of your site as Google. Think of links as advertisers and think of the pages a user land on when clicking the link in terms of Google’s expectation for relevancy in their Adwords program.

That ties in with the SEO aspect of things since Google’s natural search results are based on the same concept. You get rankings for being relevant. Someone doesn’t search Google for “make a key lime pie” and get back results for how to train their dog. So that’s the most important thing to keep in mind when doing any linking for any article.

Let’s look at another quick example. I showed you the Glenn Livingston with Alex Goad interview that ranks well. But we’re also providing even better using experience, by linking from the interview to both Glenn and Alex’s profile, among other associations of Glenn’s like Perry Marshall.

Do a quick search on Big G for “Dr Glenn Livingston” and you will see that we have also grabbed 2 spots on the first page (#5 and #6) – his profile the main listing, and the interview the 2^nd, indented listing. Check it out below:

drglennlivingstongoogle SEO and User Experience Pt 2: Themed Content & Linking Structure

Dr. Glenn Livingston Google Search Result

That’s a pretty good example, of not only providing a better user experience but more relevant content to visitors on your website. While internal linking plays a huge role in that, there’s something else that all too often misconceived. Having high quality outbound in your content will help your rankings – not hurt them.

#3 – Outbound Linking

Here’s the deal. Having links out to relevant content is super important for Google SEO. Let’s examine:

Remember the example of Glenn Livingston’s profile? It’s purpose is to now have a wealth of information on Glenn and another sort of “results page” just like we’re Google. The first link we run into is an outbound link with the anchor text “apply the 80/20 rule” – which is a topic related to Glenn and links to this post on Clickz called “Applying the 80/20 Rule to Your Business”.

So…

1. The topic is relevant to Glenn… 2. The anchor text is relevant to the topic… 3. The resulting page is relevant to the reader for more information on the topic. That’s a good outbound link to a blog post that Google loves to see.

The blog post was found simply by searching Google for “applying the 80/20 rule”. That blog post ranks for that keyword. That tells us that Google likes that blog post and finds it relevant to the topic. As a result, when they find that in the content, they see it’s super relevant and in turn will rank the content higher in their index.

Implementing Combined Circular SEO

Simply applying these 3 core concept to your site and SEO efforts, you will see anywhere from a modest gain to a dramatic increase in the rankings you get in Google. It’s all about providing a huge circle of relevancy along with a good user experience. Do that, and you will be able to satisfy the Google SEO Gods easily.

In order to do that, you have to set your content up for the “circle” or web. Meaning doing your research first, which will allow you to see where you might go in the future. This is called “reverse engineering”. Not the time or place to get into that, but the concept is simple. Your content needs to have the elements in it necessary to complete the circle.

Again that means relevant, people (associations), topics, and events. These are the core of the circle. Find the center, where those three things meet and you will have an extremely optimized piece of content that Google will love. Not to mention it allows you to do some of the internal and external linking mentioned above. And when you get to that point, that’s where your rankings are really going to shoot up.

In the next post in this series, you’ll hear more about using a cool little-known tool Google has virtually hidden away that will allow to easily complete the circle. In fact, they tell you exactly what they want from you.

Don’t forget to read part 1 in this series, SEO & User Experience: Google’s Core Value – if you haven’t already. Put this to work and leave your questions or comments below as always.

Update:

After I wrote this article, I found this interest article called Circular Linking of SEO Elites – what do you think? Perhaps it might be useful to seek out high quality circular link partners (key words: high quality).