Let’s look at some website structure statistics: 

 

 

Compelling statistics, aren’t they? The way your website is designed and laid out, as well as how the pages link together, will impact how well your website performs in search engine results. The more time you spend on planning the structure of your website, considering ease of navigation and usability, the more effective your website will be. 

Your website’s structure is how the content, including imagery, has been organised. This includes how a page is split into sections, how much content appears on the page, and how all the pages on your website are linked. 

 

As much as the layout, or architecture, of the website is important, how each page links to another is key to user-friendliness. The more structured the website, the better the user’s journey. Visitors and Google’s bots will be able to find their way around with ease and source the information they are looking for. 

Your website’s structure must make sense to users and Google’s bots, allowing them to navigate your website successfully, and Google can index your web pages. There are five main reasons why you need to consider your website’s structure carefully: 

 

 

 

 

 

To create a website structure that delivers successful search results, follow these steps: 

 

1. Consider the site hierarchy – before you even start building your website, think about the site’s hierarchy and plan it out. By this, we mean organising your site’s information (content) in a way that is easy to follow. Avoid using too many priority categories, and make sure the sub-categories are directly related to the priority categories. 

 

2. Make sure your URL is logical – once you have your site hierarchy, the URLs should follow a similar logic. For example, https://itseeze.com/services/website-design/. So, each page’s URL should follow the same structure. 

 

3. Don’t lose your pages in the sub-categories – your website’s navigation should follow the site hierarchy, and if the pages are buried too deep, your visitors/users won’t be able to find the information quite so quickly. Think laterally more than horizontally. 

 

4. Plan a navigation path that is clear and easy to follow – your website’s navigation path should be easy to identify and follow by users. There are two main elements to website navigation: 

a. The menu – each category should be the main heading on your menu, such as Services, then beneath should be listed your sub-categories, i.e. the different services you are offering. You will often find that the larger the website, such as an ecommerce store, some priority categories will be in a menu at the bottom of the website. 

b. Breadcrumbs – these are clickable links that can be viewed at the top of a page or even a blog post. They display the website structure, showing users the path they’ve taken to get to this point. Breadcrumbs will help to boost your SEO and improve your user experience. 

 

5. Decide on your linking strategy – Google uses your content and links to rank your website. So, as well as making sure the links are meaningful, they should be relevant, too. Over time, and particularly if you have a blog or news page, you will have built up a lot of content on your website. In addition, much of the content will be similar. Therefore, to help Google find the right page that’s relevant to the search query, you identify the anchor text and add the link to the page you want Google to rank. 

 

6. Make sure you’ve got a sitemap – last on the list, but also one of the most important, is making sure you’ve got a website sitemap. Despite ticking all of the above boxes, Google’s bots may still miss something on your website. An XML sitemap just makes sure that nothing gets missed. 

At it’seeze, our team create bespoke website designs that are fully SEO optimised, user-friendly, affordable and rank highly in Google’s search engine results. You can be confident that the website we build for you will boost your business.