Booster Pages
Definition: A term used in search engine optimization to note a page receiving secondary visibility for a given key phrase. This booster page is used to boost the weight of a phrase on its primary page by way of internal linking.

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Cross linking pages within a web site has long been considered an SEO ‘best practice.’ It serves as a trail for the search engines, aiding in better indexing, and can create a more seamless, informational user experience. Using anchor text that includes keywords from the destination page is a great way to ‘boost’ the ranking of that page, but is certainly nothing new…

We’ve taken the concept of internal linking and added an additional element of strategy involving the careful selection and usage of precicely which pages should be linked from. These, if they pass the test, become ‘booster pages.’

IMPORTANT!

It should be noted that, in identifying the right booster pages for your internal linking structure, it the first rule of thumb is relevance. If it doesn’t enhance the user experience, if the links are arbitrary and for the sole pupose of SEO, your internal linking structure will end in collapse.

As the search engines get smarter, the differentiation between ‘white hat’ and ‘black hat’ SEO becomes more apparent.

That said, let’s look at how to identify an appropriate booster page:

If your web pages are strongly themed, with one or two keywords each, a search for “company name + a keyphrase” should return one, or two pages in the SERPS at most. The second result would then become your booster page – a page that cross links to your destination page, (the first result from your search.)

Why are booster pages effective? We discovered through analysis of one client’s keyword ranking report. The question was… “why is x page receiving high visibility for the keyword assigned to, and themed around, page y?” The answer seemed to be that page y linked to page x, not the other way around.

The short answer is this:

Search engines don’t soley determine that a keyword is important just by an internal link’s anchor text – they also consider the pages visibility for that phrase. Plainly, if you link to your ‘metal stamping equipment’ page from your ‘metal stamping’ page, you should make sure first that your page about metal stampings is also receiving some level of visibility for ‘metal stamping equipment.’ If so, it’s a great ‘booster page.’

If you think about it, it makes sense. The search engines look at themes, and they look at relationships. If you have individual pages that are themed around different pets, ie: a dog page, a cat page, a bird page, naturally the search engines will see you as a site about ‘pets’ (This is just an example here, folks.)

But if you have a site that receives visibility for numerous related keywords… such as metal stampings, metal stamping capabilities, metal stamping materials, equipment, etc, you’ll likely be viewed by the search engines as a relevant and trusted source for these topics, and will likely get served on the results pages for related queries.

While we do feel our hypothesis will pan out, we’re still watching. If you have comments or experience to the contrary, we welcome your feedback.

This entry was posted on Thursday, February 22nd, 2007 at 6:30 pm and is filed under General. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.