Content
However, even though most sites look different, if you peel back the surface, most are based on a few simple site architecture types. The first thing before moving to build your website and all the individual pages is to know what website structure is and how it affects your site visitors’ user experience. They can be used to share content, communicate, advertise, sell, and even run whole businesses. This means the question of how to structure a website is a little more complex, and site architecture is a slightly broader topic than they were somewhat 30 years ago. If you follow the recommendations described above, then you will probably get answers to most of these questions. Unfortunately, content development is often postponed for later, giving priority to other ‘more important’ matters, such as ‘Design’ or ‘Writing code’.
Decide what you want your user to do, whether it’s making a purchase or signing up for a newsletter, and create a user flow to define how they’ll get there. A step-by-step view of their how to plan a website structure experience ensures you don’t miss any steps when creating a website structure. For an ecommerce business with only one product, try a linear model to keep them focused on your offering.
Have a clear menu bar
Sure, if we craft content for users it will definitely work for search engines as well. Present user structured data to organize different types of content you have on the website. You’ve already analyzed which keywords work for your rivals. Now, it’s time to add more research to those observations and collect a full keyword list for your website. Rankings in the SERPs are connected to how easy a website is to use and navigate.
They are especially common and useful in eCommerce websites. Breadcrumbs basically show your website structure and each page’s parent pages and categories all the way down to the homepage. They let users know where they are and how they got there and, in addition, provide loads of information about your site topics and structure to search engines. We have already alluded to what site structure is in the introduction.
Using Visual sitemap generators
There are SEO tools and techniques that enable you to manage this effort, but they are often either not installed, not configured, or configured incorrectly. They will then subsequently reward you with higher rankings. Sitemap – A well-structured sitemap is a great tool to list all the pages on your site for search engines and visitors. Pages and posts – They are the main stations for your visitors on their journey through your site and also often where they enter it. The main reason to care about your website’s structure is the user experience. When your site is complicated to work with and things are hard to find, visitors will get frustrated and leave.
This is also called sequential structure and is relatively simple. 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. Footer navigation – The footer is an underutilized element on many sites that offers a lot of possibilities to provide additional assistance to your visitors. Categories – These are one of the main ways to order pages on your site by topic.
Create an Online Experience Your Users Will Love
There is a free account available with limited functionality. Contact – Most of the time, you want to include this, especially when you are selling something online. It’s a sign of trust that visitors can get in touch and talk to someone. You know – things you can see with your eyes and that are more obvious.
Keep in mind that the best choice for your selected structure should take into account a lot of detailed information before choosing. You should consider business goals, content audit results and some trial and error. The image below shows a basic example of how a webbed site structure can look. Because there is no set structure to follow, it can be manipulated to the needs of the site so long as it’s beneficial to the people you want to use it.
How to structure your website (and why it’s important)
It always used the anchor text to understand what the page you’re linking to is about. Nowadays, it also considers the content https://globalcloudteam.com/ around the link to gather extra information. Google is becoming better at recognizing related words and concepts.
As a result, you will receive a working database, which can be further contextually worked out to create the optimal structure of your site. Planning the website structure is a very time-consuming process. For the most intuitive display of the structure, the ‘Visual Sitemap’ tool is used. A Visual Sitemap is a hierarchical diagram reflecting the actual structure of your website. The main reason of this tool’s popularity is the complete comprehension of the structure that it gives to the UX designer.
Create notes and high-level specifications for each page
After that, it’s just a matter of researching and deciding on your most important topics and content. Website structure or architecture will not always be the first thing on your mind when it comes to building a site, yet, undeservedly so. How your website is structured definitely needs and deserves your attention. It lays the groundwork for how visitors navigate it and search engines explore your pages.
- Prevents keyword cannibalization – Content that covers similar topics stays connected but separate.
- If you have a big site with lots of categories, this may clutter your website and makes your main menu a poor reflection of the rest of your site.
- It’s a good idea to design a site with multiple categories that also branch off into organized subpages.
- To create a website structure, you need to map out how you will organize the content on your site .
- That would result in fewer visits from both visitors and search engines.
- It’s not only frustrating for users but it makes it difficult for Google to index.