Building Your Website Structure for Great SEO & UX 5 Steps

It’s an architecture that you are supposed to use in a straightforward fashion and follows a predefined, logical order . Think of the sign-up process for a web application, a one-page website, check-out process, or online course. Ecommerce sites are another example that start with broader categories and then trickle down into more specific classifications and from there to product pages.

It’s a good idea to design a site with multiple categories that also branch off into organized subpages. It also enables them to engage with your top-tier pages first . The grouping of similar elements or topics within a website into broader categories ensures easier navigation and a smoother user flow.

Easier content management

A decent site structure also enables search engines to find and index content quickly. A good structure should, therefore, lead to a higher ranking in Google. The website structure for search robots is its internal links. The more links go to a page, the higher its priority within the website, and the more times the search engine crawls it. Search engines will do their utmost to crawl any website without specific directions.

• Infinite scroll can decrease the number of clicks it takes for users to reach a product.
• This includes defining your most important pages, having a rough sketch of the URL structure and internal links, and planning how you want your users to navigate between various pages.
• — Local and global navigation systems provide a flexible and easy to understand navigation system.
• Use the site map structure to create web pages that make it easy for users to find what they are looking for.
• For more information on how to create a proper linking structure, read our guide to internal linking.
• Ensuring this is done ensures your understanding of your target audience, search behavior, and competitive topics are built into your website structure and layout.

SE Ranking’s Website Audit can ease this process for you and create a sitemap automatically. The rule of thumb here is that every page should have a link pointing to it and coming from it. Search crawlers find and index websites by going from one page to another, and they do so by following the links, unless they are told otherwise. Smart internal linking will help crawlers find all the content on your website.

Reasons to Improve Your Website’s Structure

This call-to-action generates a Calendly link with available slots for a video conference. In a linear model, the site visitor can go straight to the next step when they’ve learned what they need to know from the previous one. Once they’ve chosen an offering from the home page they can learn more about it on a secondary page and then convert on the next. An intuitive website structure paves the way for a smooth visitor experience. Get our free courses right away to learn how to make your site rank higher. Sort out hidden pages and dead ends in four easy steps with our orphaned content SEO workout, available in Yoast SEO Premium.

Enter the URL of the main page in the URL bar and start crawling hitting the ‘Start’ button. User Testing – have users test the usability of the website structure. The right website structure will help to distribute the link equity by priority.

Why is website sitemapping important?

Do it when it makes sense, and make sure your links fit the context in which they appear. That’s why they are called contextual links because they refer to something “in context”. Avoid placing links that are random and https://globalcloudteam.com/ add nothing to your content. First, make it a habit to link from each page to other relevant content on your site. You know, like we do in this post, where we point out related articles that might be of interest to you.

Are people just looking for an answer to a question or a definition? You can also use Google’s search results to create great content that fits someone’s needs. Categories are especially how to plan a website structure important for blogs, improving navigation as well as topical relevance. The use of categories can also help reduce the number of orphan pages and encourages more internal linking.

Content Development

There needs to be a healthy balance of logical reasoning for decisions on page placement and understanding that it cannot cause restrictions for users who want to jump around the site. Offering options to get from one side of a site to another can be done through navigational links on every page. Effective organization makes for an effective product no matter if it’s one page website vs multiple pages. For a single page, that organization may come in the form of information architecture rather than full-on site structure. Using one of the four main website structure types makes it super simple to provide that experience. Besides, you can create a structure by analyzing the websites of your competitors.

That’s because it ensures that any two pages on your website are just a few clicks away from each other. That’s important for both your users and search engine crawlers. Interlinking has a big impact on how search engines crawl each website. Place tags in a place where site visitors can easily see them such as your sidebar or at the end of your blog posts/product pages.

In this article

The only way to have your sitelinks featured in search results is to have a website with a clearly defined hierarchy. Internal linking gives users an easier way to access other content, resulting in a better user experience. The best URL structures should be easy to read by a user and a search engine and contain target queries, so they are content-rich.