Site Structure and SEO: How to Build an Optimised Website

Search engines favour websites with great site structure. If you’re looking to get your website to the top of Google’s results, you will need to tune and organise your site’s structure. This post will discuss the benefits of organised site structure and how it enhances your site’s SEO. But first, how do we improve a site’s structure?

Website hierarchy

One of the most important things to consider is website hierarchy. You need to plan your hierarchy before beginning anything else. This hierarchy eventually becomes your site’s navigation and structure.Here are some things to consider when creating your site’s hierarchy.

• Logical – Strive for simplicity. Your site structure needs to be easily navigable for your customers and for web crawlers. Ensure that your main categories are clear and distinct from each other and that your subcategories relate to the main categories.
• A number of main categories between 2 and 7 – there is really no sense in having a huge number of main categories. You should focus on a few main things. If your site structure has more than 7 categories, you may need to consider cutting them down a bit.
• A balanced number of sub categories in each category – try to keep the number of subcategories in each category even. If you have 20 sub categories within one category and only 2 within another, it might be time to consider shuffling your site’s hierarchy around a little.

Learn more about good site structure in Southampton

URL structure

Next, you will need to ensure that your URL structure follows your navigation hierarchy. It’s also important to make sure that your URLs contain your SEO keywords.

HTML or CSS

Web crawlers favour simple programming languages like HTML or CSS. building your site in Ajax or JavaScript will mean that the crawler will have more difficulty covering your site’s entire structure.

Clear and Navigable Header

Your top header should be concise and to the point. Simply use the header to list your main pages rather than opting for any bells and whistles. Text links with anchors provide the strongest SEO, so ideally you should stick to that, rather than image based links and CSS drop-downs in your navigation bar.

Shallow-Depth Navigation Structure

One of the better-known rules of website design is the “three-click rule”. This essentially means that a website user should be able to find the information they’re looking for in three clicks or less. While his rule has been controversial – it might be best to think of it as a guideline, rather than a rule – there’s no denying that a shallow site structure makes it easier for users to find what they need. It also makes it easier for crawlers to cover your website.

So, with that in mind, why does website structure matter so much for your site’s SEO? Why not just build a site with lots of pages and keywords and consider structure afterwards? Here are some of the ways that good site structure can help you to attract more business.

Good Site Structure Improves User Experience

Google’s search algorithm uses information from searchers; this means that in order for your site to feature early on in Google’s listings, it must be user-friendly. A site with clear and logical structure is satisfying for a potential customer to use. Beyond all of the colours and images, what makes a relevant, navigable website is good site structure.

Learn how Google ratings can improve your business

Site-Links

Here’s an example of Facebook’s site links.

Site links provide massive boosts to your site’s SEO. They make your website more easily navigable and point users to the more relevant parts of your site. They also vastly improve your site’s click-through rate. Unfortunately, you can’t just ask Google to list your website with site-links. Google’s algorithm awards them based on good site structure.

Better Crawling

Web crawlers cover all of a site’s structure to index content and have it return in search results. Good site structure makes it easier for these crawlers to index your content. While these crawlers usually aren’t able to access all of your site, having an easily navigable site structure definitely makes it more likely that they will.

Does all of this sound incredibly confusing? Not to worry! Our team of SEO and web design specialists know exactly how to optimise your site’s structure. Get in touch with us today and improve your site’s structure today!