One area of good practice for every dating site, and which is a core element of on-page SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) is to create content depth and a logical internal links structure. Dating Factory provides some excellent templates as a great baseline starting point with plenty of options on how to develop and customise them.

An internal links structure is important to send a signal to search engines that a site is more than just a thin “one stop shop”. Internal links are relevant links between a site’s pages, developed into a hierarchy, which links pages together in a logical order or pattern.
For example, for a general mainstream dating site, build a geographical based hierarchy as follows:

Another option is to build a hierarchy around sexual orientation with a geographical hierarchy beneath it:

Think about the best structure for the site, what makes sense in terms of relevant links for the site’s target niches and map out a structure to develop.
Once done, start building the discreet individual landing pages for the structure(s).Do this by adding landing pages to the site. There is a Dating Factory tutorial on how to do this which can be read here. In essence, this is a very powerful feature which can be used to develop discreet landing pages to a very fine level of detail:

• Develop a specific landing page for a very focussed sub set of a site’s target audience, such as “men over forty in New York Cityseeking women”;
  • this could be used in a Google PPC campaign where keywords are matched with location to target a niche dimension of a site;
• Incorporate this specific landing page into a hierarchy of pages to create a hierarchy within a dating site.

So build landing pages first; don’t worry about the hierarchy just yet. The key is to follow a structure and build the content which will populate it. There are a number of key initial steps to create a targeted landing page:

• Give each page a unique name, create it and save it;
• Once saved, start to edit the page, by customising the landing page target traffic options;
• For a geographic based landing page, select the country, region and city for the page as appropriate;
• Create a separate landing page for each location, by country, region and city.

Now that these landing pages have been created, start to build an internal link structure on the site.
On the main landing page, add in the first level of country links. Insert these in the main front page just before the finaltag of the site, creating links at country level.
Then, on each country’s landing page, add in links for each country; so on the landing page for Australia, insert links to landing pages for New South Wales, Queensland, Victoria etc. On the region landing pages, add in the major cities in each region, so on the New South Wales page add in a link for a Sydney landing page.The home page should then have a range of links which will look something like this:

All of the above links point to a dedicated landing page for each of the cities listed.
This approach will give you depth and structure to your site, and it’s quick and easy to do using the tools from Dating Factory.
My next article will explore further options for customising your bespoke landing pages even further, using more promo tools provided by Dating Factory.

In Summary

• Unique landing pages can be leveraged to create depth and structure for your dating site;
• Your site will benefit from this for SEO as it will not be “thin” in terms of content;
• Use the landing page creation tool provided by Dating Factory to create bespoke landing pages;
• Create an internal link structure starting with your main home page and linking your landing pages in a structured hierarchy;
• Follow the steps in my next article to customise your landing pages.

Good luck!