Website Structure Definition & Explanation

If you’re getting ready to build and launch a website, you might not realize the significance of a strong website structure. However, an organized and effective website structure can elevate your search engine optimization efforts. Now, it’s time to add more research to those observations and collect a full keyword list for your website. An effective structure helps make content more relevant for search intents.

Calls to action should be seen by visitors within split seconds once they land on a page. You should consider tweaking your web page design if you don’t have any or https://globalcloudteam.com/ if yours aren’t clear. If you are using pages to publish your content, you can create hub pages and internally link them to each other using a flat URL structure.

Show breadcrumbs

All transitions between pages should be natural and any page should be accessible in no more than 3 clicks. This is an example of a node representing the home page, with the next three level nodes representing the main categories. The smaller nodes represent the pages linked from the category nodes. What this seems to imply is that a website can be viewed as a hierarchical structure, with the main topic at the home page and the sub-topics comprising the next level down.

seo site structure

These types of site structures start with low-level categories and build a system from there. Provides additional information in search results – If Google understands your site well, it might show SERP features like site links together with your main search result. Information architecture describes the way information on your website is organized. As a website owner, you need to make sure your content is arranged logically to prevent users from getting frustrated and confused while browsing your website. There are two useful tools that offer an easy-to-understand indication of how close or off-track you are to creating a user-friendly website; heatmaps and behaviour flow. Your website should be appealing to both Google and searchers.

steps to SEO-optimized website structure

Internal linking, which further makes it challenging for the users to access the website. Here the basic idea is that every page on your website includes relevant links that are within the website and outside the website. Internal linking is all about a navigation guide that helps users easily navigate from one page to another without any difficulty. But make sure you don’t create other common issues through improper implementation, such as duplicate content.

seo site structure

Below are some suggestions to enhance UX and rank higher on search results. Site structure generally starts with how the main pages interlink. In most cases, the main navigation is based on a hierarchical structure.

Create a High-Quality User Experience (UX)

“When creating an SEO friendly website structure, you must use logic to group products and buying styles together,” writes Marketing Labs‘ Matt Janaway. Sure, 404 errors and internal links have a part to play in how Google spiders find their way around your site. Crawl budget refers to the maximum number of pages a search engine can crawl.

seo site structure

But it’s important that all of your URLs follow the same structure. Category pages make organizing your site’s architecture super easy over the long-term. Pagespeed is a confirmed Google ranking factor on desktop and mobile. Learn how to speed up your WordPress website in 11 simple steps. Optimizing your internal PageRank and validating your structure ideas with your target audience via user testing. Generally speaking, they’re not necessary if you have a relatively small website with a flat structure.

Main Types of Website Structures

Google calculates the authority and relevance of your site pages based on their internal link strength. This blog post teaches you what to check so you can answer that question with a “Yes.” Let’s dive in. Creating a clean, intuitive structure to your website is a good move for users of all stripes. The more we create website experiences that are well-organized, helpful, and conscientious of users, the more we all win. It’s probably worth noting that each of your website’s pages has authority that is to some degree passed to the pages it links to (both within your site and off-site links).

You can easily set it up in just a few clicks – no coding required. Before we dive in with the techniques, let’s be clear on why the structure of your website needs to be SEO-friendly. Join our international team of Playmakers working to make business analytics easier how to plan a website structure for everyone. As a result, you can make all your pages visible and accessible from one place. This can help boost your User Experience and improve user engagement. At DreamHost, you can expect top-of-the-range speeds with built-in caching, available with all plans.

— Follow The 3 Clicks Rule

However, a human friendly sitemap, again, encourages more dwell time , it also puts all of your website links (within silos!!) into logically organized sections. A good website structure must include proper categories, internal links, navigation and breadcrumbs. If everything is updated accurately on the website, then it becomes effortless to rank your site in the top searches of Google. Even large, complex ecommerce sites with many subcategories can get creative with faceted navigation to maintain a flat website architecture. A properly organized site structure is an important step toward its effective promotion. Think about what pages your site will include and how they will be connected.

  • Otherwise, you’ll end up with products that feel out of place within their parent categories.
  • Internal linking is an important SEO strategy that enables you to connect different pages on your website to one another.
  • Which means moving content around is a bit of a no-no since it would change its URLs, but that’s how you’d build the hard silos version of this.
  • The menu should contain links to all pages that most users may need.

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