Keyword diversification/ site structure issues

Question

I am wondering if you could help me out with some keyword/ site structure issues that I have. Firstly I will mention our background (to give context), and then I will mention the question at hand.

Background of our site structure:

We have our main site under greatlearning.com. Under this we have our main products greatlearning.com/ipc, greatlearning.com/imyc, greatlearning.com/lfl. These are separate products, however all to do with education.

We outsource our web providers, and so far the current CMS system only allows us to have two levels below the products e.g. greatlearning.com/ipc/the-ipc/units-of-work. So the /the-ipc/ is fixed (main nav item), and the /units-of-work is editable. Sadly however we cannot create a level below this e.g. greatlearning.com/ipc/the-ipc/units-of-work/page-or-section-goes-here. Enabling another level would require a great deal of work so this is off the cards.

We have spoken to our developers and they have agreed to give us ftp access to one section on the website. This will allow us to create folders/ pages under the url of greatlearning.com/info/. This will allow us to create custom landing pages and any additional custom pages e.g. for events, questionnaires, freebees etc. An example of this would be greatlearning.com/info/questionair-2014/page.html.

This is all great, however we really need to diversify our keywords on our websites e.g. on this page greatlearning.com/ipc/the-ipc/what-is-ipc we ideally need to have links going off from this page onto other separate pages to talk about 'national curriculum updates', or 'ways it helps teachers', or 'ways it helps children learn' etc.

So our problem at the moment is how to structure the site so that it makes sense for our keyword diversification.

Question:

Given that we have a new malleable section of our website (greatlearning.com/info/) could we then use this for our keyword diversification?

For example on this page greatlearning.com/ipc/the-ipc/what-is-ipc, could this then link off to urls such as greatlearning.com/info/ipc/national-curriculum-updates/, or greatleanring.com/info/ipc/ways-the-ipc-helps-teachers/.

As for user experience, we will make sure the pages have clear links forwards and backwards to the main pages. Our main concern is what Google will think of this structure. Also, will it be strong enough to drive traffic to this new /info/ section.

Answer 1

Having a separate "info" directory isn't going to hurt your SEO efforts. In such fact, such an arrangement is very common. Many sites have a "blog" section that is very similar to what you are proposing.

Google also doesn't pay very much attention to your directory structure at all. I've worked with sites that have a deep directory structure and sites that have hundreds of thousands of pages that are all in the root directory. Both of those (as well as solutions in between) can be fine for SEO.

When creating content for your site, worry less about the URL and worry more about how users will find it and if it will be useful to them. Specifically:

• Write content that addresses real questions and issues that your customers or potential customers might have.
• Link to your "info" articles from the most relevant places.
• Link from your "info" articles to all the relevant sections of your website.
• Use your keywords in a natural way, don't add extra occurrences of keywords, especially where it doesn't sound natural.