Architecture Dilemna.... Please help!

[Marcoose]

OK so I am having my site redesigned - www.spreadbettingcompanies.com and I have a question about site architecture. If you can help with this it would be really apprecaited because it's doing my head in.

Up until now I was going to go for the following structure on the new site:

- Top level - splash page (people can either click on sports (spread betting) or financial.

- second level (sports or financial pages) - here would be the main sections and links to the blog pages, guides, etc, etc.

Now the reason for my indecision is that I'm concerned that with my inner pages not being linked to from the homepage as they aren't going to me getting as much google juice. I am also concerned that the hierarchy isn't going to be flat enough.

Of course I will be going after links to the financial and sports pages but these arent going to be "home". My plan was to concentrate on attracting links to all 3 pages - home (splash), financial and sports.

My reasoning initially for going for the splash page is that:

1. Financial and sports spread betting are two separate entities.
2. It makes it easier to link build for me to have 2 separate sites (under the same TLD) for sports and financial.
3. Bounce rate should come right down.

AI hope this is understandable and thanks in asvance for any responses.

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[peter_w]

There's no reason why you can't link to multiple sections from your homepage/splash page? In fact I'd probably recommend it. The logic behind having a "entry" page on a domain like this is fairly sound (I usually totally discourage it). But I'd probably do a little bit more SEO friendly than a straight forward "click to continue".

I'd essentially break the page down into 4 elements. Header, Left Column, Right Column, Footer.

This way you're satisfying both your SEO needs (getting links to the deeper pages) and also being straight forward for users - getting them to the correct section quickly).

 

[Marcoose]

There's no reason why you can't link to multiple sections from your homepage/splash page? In fact I'd probably recommend it. The logic behind having a "entry" page on a domain like this is fairly sound (I usually totally discourage it). But I'd probably do a little bit more SEO friendly than a straight forward "click to continue".

I'd essentially break the page down into 4 elements. Header, Left Column, Right Column, Footer.

This way you're satisfying both your SEO needs (getting links to the deeper pages) and also being straight forward for users - getting them to the correct section quickly).

Thanks very much for the indepth reply! I definitely think this is the way forward. I was considering mixing in the links into the bottom text but this probably wouldn't be enough.