Improve search engine ranks - plan your pages.

Improve search engine ranks with a site containing well planned pages focusing on specific, relevant keywords.

Here's a step-by-step guide on how to plan the pages of your website.

1. Do your keyword research

Your goal here is to discover the exact phrases (or keywords) people are searching for. How much demand is there? How much supply, or competition?

Paid-for tools will also figure out the likelihood of success with these keywords. Including "good" keywords as part of your site's page content will help improve search engine ranks in the future.

This step will take time. You'll need to learn how to use the tools for a start. And if you are searching for a niche subject to build a website about, you'll likely research lots of different topics. So don't rush things.

If you haven't already, check out my page on how to improve search engine placement with keywords for keyword research tools and ideas.

2. Improve search engine ranks - focus each page on a keyword

Your site's main keyword can be the keyword for the home page. If your site is about taking a vacation in New York, your keyword for the home page might be "New York vacation", for example.

Group your other keywords into sub-topics. For the New York theme, you might have keywords about hotels and other places to stay, restaurants, city transport, shopping, or places to visit.

Let's think about those places to visit. Keywords might include:

• new york parks
• new york city ballet
• new york city attractions
• empire state building
• brooklyn bridge...

- and so on. Plan a page about the parks, a page about the ballet, the Brooklyn bridge and so on. Aim to fill each page with good information - and, with a site like this, photos and possibly video too. Your planning can be in note form for the moment - but do you get the idea? A strategy to improve search engine ranks doesn't just depend on keywords, but good content too.

If you look at each page of this site, you'll see that every page focuses on one keyword - which, as you'll see, is also contained in the URL or address of the page, as well as the title and first headline. All these tactics can help improve search engine ranks.

3. Organize a site structure

Tier One
This is your home page. The keyword for this home page will tell the search engines what your site is about - so it will probably be a more general keyword, hopefully with a lot of demand - and probably a lot of supply too. The keyword for the home page of this site is simply "website traffic."

The New York site might have "new york" or "new york city" as its home page keyword.

Tier Two
These pages are like "topic pages" for the different sections of your site. You can see my tier two pages for this site on the navigation bar on the left.

• I have a Tier Two page about Website Content. The keyword for this page isn't actually "website content" - it's actually "more website traffic" - the page is all about getting more website traffic through content, all helping to improve search engine ranks through providing lots of information. This page leads through to three more pages all about content which are my Tier Threes.

• For the New York site, one Tier Two could be all about those places to visit as we mentioned above. A possible keyword for this Tier Two page could be the third one in the list above: "new york city attractions" - and this page would then lead to Tier Three pages all about the parks, the ballet, and the sights you mustn't miss!

Another Tier Two page could introduce the "new york hotels" section. Yet another might be about "shopping in new york" - and so on.

Tier Three
Each Tier Three page gives more detailed information about the topic of that section. You might have two, three, ten or even twenty different pages within each section.

• The page you're reading now is a Tier Three page. It belongs to my "search engines" section, and the Tier Two, or introductory page for this whole section is on the navigation bar to the left. I've also put a link back up to that Tier Two page at the bottom of this page.

• Heading back to New York - a Tier Two about where to stay might lead off to lots of different Tier Three pages about luxury hotels, cheap hotels, YMCAs, hostels, rentals and so on.

4. Naturally create your site's navigation

Your Tier One page, the home page, will link to your Tier Two pages.

Your Tier Two pages will link back to the home page, and down to their own Tier Three pages on that topic.

The Tier Three pages will link back to the Tier Two, as well as to the home page. There are no dead ends.

Use clickable text links throughout.
My Tier Twos are not only linked from my home page by my navigation bar - there is also a set of text links at the bottom of my home page to all my Tier Twos. And my Tier Twos have text links leading to the Tier Threes - and back again.

When a search engine spider visits your site, it can find every page.
It can race from the home page, down to a Tier Two, off to a Tier Three, back up to the Tier Two, down to another Tier Three, back up to the home page, off to another Tier Two and so on. At least, that's how it happens in my imagination! But it is a very effective way to improve search engine ranks.

For your visitors, you're making things easy, too.
They can navigate around your site and never get lost. If you provide a site map, too, this provides another way for visitors and search engines to find all the pages on your site.

When the search engines find it easy to find and index every page on your site... and when they know exactly what each page is about, thanks to your keyword focused content pages - you'll find it much easier to improve search engine ranks.