Website Content Pyramid: Websites are usually information focused, that is, they have content material about some topic, subject or idea.
If you are creating a website for your business, then you need to grasp the website content pyramid strategy because it will help you to optimize your website for better search engine ranking and for ongoing accumulation of page rank for each web page.
Website Content Pyramid
When I refer to website content pyramid, I am referring to the overall structure and content of your website. I am not specifically referring to the actually content on your web page.
Sometimes this is called mapping your website or diagramming your website. I will simply call it the website content pyramid.
WHY IS WEBSITE STRUCTURE IMPORTANT? Website structure improves the user experience, improves the crawlability of your site for page rank, increases search engine ranking of individual pages and gets more pages indexed in the search engines.
Website Content Pyramid involves four structural levels.
1. Tier One Web Pages
The old adage of keeping it super simple (KISS) is the premise behind the website content pyramid.
The first tier web page is the home page. The home page is a summary of what your website is about and what your website is going to offer your visitors.
If you do an excellent job with your home page, then your visitor will find it easy to navigate your website and find the subject matter of interest that they were looking for in the first place. In other words, the home page is the door to your website. If you make the door easy to open, then you win.
2. Tier Two Web Pages
The second tier web pages are category pages. These category pages should lead your visitors closer to the subject matter which they were looking for from the start.
What does this look like in practice. Your home page could be about digital photography (First Tier). The category pages could focus on lenses, cameras and accessories (Second Tier). Can you see the structure beginning to build. Second tier web pages always link to the home page.
3. Tier Three Web Pages
Third tier web pages include all your important website content. Third tier web pages often expands and explains the main topics, subjects or ideas of your website.
Home page could be digital photography (Tier One), Category web pages could be lenses, cameras and accessories (Tier Two) and content pages could be zoom lenses, macro lenses, telephoto lenses, standard lenses and wide-angle lenses (Tier Three).
4. Tier Four Web Pages
Tier four web pages build onto the content of the tier three web pages. Tier three web pages may be all you need for your website. You can build thousands of web pages within the first three tiers.
However, if you were to build tier four web pages, they should expand and explain the content pages. For examples, you may want to expand and explain the zoom lenses in your tier three web pages by looking at the different aspects of zoom lenses or you may want to categorize them according to their f/stop.
For starters, if you are creating a new website, you should have a home page, five category pages and six content pages. In all, that is thirty-six web pages.
For example, this website is a fairly new website. I have a home page that opens the door to seven category web pages. Those seven category web pages will open the door to hundreds of content pages. The structure is endless when you build your website with the website content pyramid in mind.