Explanation of The Site, Linking and Structures
After my last huge post that stirred things up a bit, I want to publish this article as it may be difficult to follow all the events that took place my previous post as well as the comments in the post. This article give readers and visitors an explanation of my site. This includes how I handle internal and external linking, site structure and how I attempt to index my site, categories and individual post pages.
The Home Page
The home page is designed for optimal indexing in the search engines. I display a large truncated copy of my ten most recent posts on the home page. To view each article from the home page, a reader will need to click on the post title. The home page is listed in my robots.txt as allowed and also is registered in my sitemap.xml as an accessible page that is updated hourly.
The Individual Post Pages
The individual post pages are optimized for search engines. The individual post pages are found and investigated by search engines via my home page and sitemap.xml. Links in the individual post pages do not use the rel=nofollow tag. Any links included in the individual posts are made accessible to search engines via their webcrawler such as the googlebot and by way of my sitemap.xml. The individual post pages are ALLOWED pages in my robots.txt.
The Individual Comments Section
Links, pingbacks and trackbacks in the individual comments, including the comment contributor’s name have the rel=nofollow tags removed. The links in the comments are found and investigated by search engines. Comments will under go automatic prescreening. If your comment doesn’t appear, it has been held for moderation and will be reviewed for inclusion.
The Category Pages
The category pages are available to readers and visitors to aid them in quickly finding relevant content sorted by topic. The category pages are NOT optimized for search engines. The category pages are DISALLOWED in my robots.txt file and are not included in my sitemap.xml. The category pages are here for one purpose, and that is to give aid to readers and visitors by sorting my content into specific topics. Because I write about such a concentrated topic in general, in the near future the Category Pages may be removed completely from the site as they do not serve any purpose towards indexing my articles or content.
Top Page Navigation
About Me, Advertise, Contact Me and the Archives are individual pages within my site. These pages are not optimized for search engines and have been DISALLOWED in my robots.txt and are not included in my sitemap.xml. These pages are provided to visitors and readers who would like to learn more about me and have a way of contacting me. Furthermore, I provide my readers and visitors with an archive section that contains a categorized list of every post I have published on the site. Additionally, I have an advertisement page for advertisers. I do not actively advertise on the site; however, if the price is right, I may consider running a small ad, but not likely.
My banner logo is hyperlinked to my feedburner RSS Subscription page as a way for to my readers and visitors to quickly access my RSS feed and subscribe. The link to my feedburner RSS feed is not optimized for search engines and is disallowed for crawling via the rel=nofollow tag. The sites direct post feed as well as the comment feed are made available on the top right of every page. These links are also rel=nofollow. The category links below the banner are provided to my readers and visitors. These links are also rel=nofollow.
The Sidebar, Sections and Navigation
Below explains the individual section in the sidebar. The sidebar is designed to aid my readers and visitors by quickly giving them a scope for some general statistics about the site and tools for finding internal as well as external information.
- The Top Contributors: A record of the total number of comments made by my readers and visitors is kept within a database. The Top Contributors section displays the names of the bloggers who have made the most comments on my individual posts. The names on the list have a search engine friendly link direct to the contributor’s site. The rel=nofollow tag is NOT used on the links found in the Top Contributors section. The goal is not to be number one but rather just to show up on the list in any position. All links in the Top Contributors section will be seen by webcrawlers such as the googlebot.
- Most Popular Articles: A calculation is made to determine which posts are the most popular.
The formula is as follows.
Number of Permalink Views times 10
Number of Home Page Views times 2
Number of Full RSS Views times 5
Number of Comments times 20
Number of Pingbacks times 50
Number of Trackbacks times 80
Example: The most popular post has 100 permalink views, 50 home page views, 20 Full RSS views, 2 Pingbacks, 4 trackbacks, and 40 comments. The calculation of points is as follows: 100×10=1000, 50×2=100, 20×5=100, 2×50=100, 4×80=320, and 40×20=800. Final Total: 2320. All other posts are calculated for points value and are show in the high percent of points to the most popular post. The posts that listed in the Most Popular Articles section are post that readers enjoyed reading and contributing on the most. The popularity of an article depends solely on the readers and not the author. When a post makes it to the Most Popular Articles section, it is definitely worth taking the time to read. These posts are given extra exposure and can be seen by thousands of readers and visitors. Secondly these posts are given a second life and will continuously be crawled by the search engines. Dropping a comment, trackback or pingback on these most popular articles will get you a search engine friendly reference direct to your site. - Recent Visitors: This section displays the 10 most recent visitors from MyBlogLog and the 10 most recent visitors from BlogCatalog. These are javascript based widgets and are not readable by webcrawlers such as the googlebot on my site or ANY site.
- Recent Articles: This section displays the 10 most recent articles written and search engine friendly links direct to their individual post pages.
- Recent Comments: This section displays the 10 most recent comments placed be contributing readers and visitors. If the contributor filled submitted their website URL into the comment form, their name will appear in this section with a search engine friendly link direct to their site. This section does NOT use the rel=nofollow tag.
- Categories: This section displays a list of all the post categories. The category sections have been DISALLOWED in my robots.txt but are provided to readers and visitors to aid them by sorting the content into specific topics.
- Sponsored Links: This section contains paid links. I will be discontinuing the service of providing sponsored or paid links on the site. As soon as the current sponsored links have run their contract, this section will be removed.
- Categorized Blogroll: This section contains a categorized list of blogs and sites. If you would like to have your blog or site considered for inclusion, please contact me. I do NOT require anyone to reciprocate a link with me in exchange for adding their link. I will add your link to my blogroll if I feel it provides a high level of quality to my readers and visitors. Do not contact me to offer a link exchange. If you like my site and enjoy reading my articles, and want to tell your readers about me, please provide a reference on your site or pages. The links in my categorized blogroll are intended to give my readers and visitors quick and easy access to other blogs that publish a high level of quality content that may interest them. The links in my blogroll are NOT intended to help boost rankings, backlinks, Google PageRank, or better placement in the search engines. The links in my blogroll are for the eyes of my visitors and readers only. The rel=nofollow link has been applied to every link within my blogroll.
Summary
Garry Conn dot Com is a site that provides thousands of bloggers with information, tips and tricks on how to find success with blogging. I teach people how to find success online, make money online and gain popularity by blogging. Garry Conn dot Com is structured in a way that allows for thousands of readers to find my site who are reaching out for help. My site is search engine friendly and optimized for Google, Yahoo, MSN, Ask, and many other major search engines and portals. Garry Conn dot Com is a site that maintains a high level quality in the content published on the site. I take a lot of pride in the articles and content published. My ultimate goal is to help people who are interested in finding success with blogging. If you should have any comments, questions or suggestions, please feel free to contact me or drop me a comment below.
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4 comments
Thanks for breaking it down for us Garry. I like how you figure out which articles are the most popular. Do you figure out the calculations yourself or do you have a program that automatically does it for you and puts those articles that rank the highest on the list?
Oh-another quick question. When making your blogs, where do you find your templates? Or do you design them yourself using HTML? I’m a novice so I downloaded a template from OSWD and am using NVU. I’ll be working on my first non-blog website this week.
Ok, no more questions from me! I’ve get to going and get the family to church.
I use a Wordpress plugin provided by Alex King called, Popularity Contest. It’s a wonderful plugin that allows me to configure precisely who I want posts ranked for popularity.
As far as themes go. I used to visit Theme Viewer. BUT, I don’t anymore. I must stress ANYMORE. The site used to be a wonderful place to visit, but a few months ago theme designers started selling and putting sponsored links into their footer files. This took advantage of the ignorance of the common blogger by allowing them to download their theme and support their unrelated paid link by displaying them on their own sites. Consequently, the site ownerr of Theme Viewer decided to turn cheek and also decided to monetize his site as well. Now, I don’t have a problem with site monetization… but I have a huge problem with educated bloggers who take advantage of the ‘not so’ educated bloggers.
My good blog friend, Kyle Eslick has a site titled, Kyle’s Cove. I would visit his site, from there he should be able to point you in the right direction of things good Wordpress themes. To view a complete index of pages that Google has for pages related to “Wordpress Themes” on Kyle’s site, click here. There is one post in paticular that you could look at here and here.
Garry,
Thank you so much for the tips. I am checking out Kyle’s site right now and the Wordpress themes.
Garry, continuing on from all this. I stumbled onto a site that explains Google ranking in way more depth than I have seen before or do I really want to know, it’s really, really good. One part says – Links don’t give PR away, they are votes. “When a page votes its PageRank value to other pages, its own PageRank is not reduced by the value that it is voting. The page doing the voting doesn’t give away its PageRank and end up with nothing. It isn’t a transfer of PageRank. It is simply a vote according to the page’s PageRank value. .(link to reference)
As I read what you explained, you say differently.
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