Structuring of websites is an important aspect in terms of SEO. Not only in terms of generating a better link structure and capacity to help rankings but also it can generate and encourage traffic growth & enhance user experience and conversions. Site Structure can be divided up into 4 main sections, which are as follows;
Why Site Structure Is Important?
There are four primary goals in structuring, or restructuring, a web site:
- Improving the user experience. Leads to higher conversion rates & better user experience
- Improving crawlability of the site & channelling of link juice into the most important pages Dynamic linking is used as a strategy to increase the ranking of individual web pages
- Using anchor text of internal links and adding the right links in strategic places
- Improving website & page indexing by getting more pages into the search engines’ index, also known as “index penetration.” Every additional page that gets indexed adds to the ability to improve rankings.
In todays article, I will focus and discuss, Stage 1 – Logical Structure – (Humans)
Structure of a typical Web Site Design
The “Content Pyramid”
The best analogy I’ve seen to describe how themes work is to look at the website as a pyramid – the capstone on top of the pyramid doesn’t support nearly as much weight as the stones which make up the base.
First Tier: Home Page
The homepage can be referred to as the First Tier of the pyramid. The home page is where most visitors enter most web sites and in many ways you frame the user experience from this point.
Second Tier: Categories (also known as Roadmap Pages)
The second tier, from a human visitor’s perspective, is the set of category or directory pages that lead them closer to their goal. For example, a printing company who sell leaflets may have separate categories for leaflets such as A4 leaflets, A6 Leaflets, A2 Leaflets; etc
Dividing your navigation into specific categories and using standard user interface conventions (e.g. blue underlined links in body text, tab navigation breadcrumbs, left hand navigation, etc.) will help your visitors find what they want. Second Tier pages are really any page that’s linked to from the home page (assuming that spiders can follow the link).
Third Tier: Content (“Destination Pages”)
Usually the third tier is where most of the important content will reside, if you have a typical web site, where a visitor typically moves from the home page to a category page, then to a destination page. The third tier is anything that’s two clicks (links) away from the home page. In some cases, where the destinations are very popular or important, you may have direct links from the home page.
An example of a third tier site would be an online shopping site, where you’ll find the actual product detail pages or on a service website, will be the detailed descriptions of features and pricing, etc.
Tier Four: Deep Content
From an SEO perspective, the fourth tier is three clicks (or more) away from the home page, and special steps may have to be taken to get the search engines to find this content. Creating a third tier may be all that is needed in many cases, as it is possible to have thousands of pages within the first three tiers of content, so you may never have a need for more. Fourth Tier pages usually consist of supporting pages such as shipping rates, product color charts, etc.)
However, it is important to note that these tiers are not mandatory and infact you do not have to divide your site into 3 or 4 arbitrary levels. Many websites with only two levels of content is fine and can work just as well. This is just a process to help you think about Website Structure from a human perspective. Developing and optimising your website structure can significantly enhance SEO, traffic and lead generation.
Connect With Us