How to Structure Your Website for SEO
Why Is Website Structure Important?
Your website structure is one of the most important on-page SEO factors because it affects SEO and user experience. This will have a major impact on how well you rank.
When search engines crawl your site, they organize information by indexing your site. This index includes your content (keywords and locations) and other aspects of pages such as pictures, videos, and date published. When a search term is entered the search engine searches every page that includes the search term and serves up what it thinks is the most relevant.
A properly structured site, silos content into associated groups. The more content you create around these groups, the more likely you are to rank for keywords associated with these groups or what I like to call categories.
These categories also help users navigate your site. Picture eBay with nothing but products. It would be difficult to find related products. You could use the search function or possibly the related products at the bottom, but without category pages, it would be a mess.
How Site Structure Can Improve SEO and User Experience.
- Improves how well search engines understand the purpose and intent of the content.
- Improves how well search engines find and index your most important content.
- Improves how well you can effectively target keywords.
- Improves user’s ability to navigate your site.
- Improves the flow of link equity to relevant content on your site.
In my previous article “What Are SEO Keywords And Do They Really Matter Today?” I used eBay as an example of how keywords are used in the site structure. For eBay to rank for many different keywords and categories, they must link each product to the correct category.
For example one of the major categories is “Fashion.” Once you click on fashion, you have subcategories. One of the subcategories is “women’s clothing.” Under that category, you will see more options. One of the categories is “dresses” (women’s dresses). Under dresses, you will find the landing pages for each product.
Picture it as a pyramid.
The home page of eBay is the brand. Each of the levels is an opportunity to rank for keywords and each level down is a little less competitive because the keywords they can rank for become longer better known as long tail keywords.
Here is the search volume for each level “keyword” according to Google Keyword Planner.
“Fashion” – 90,500 Average Monthly Searches
“Women’s Clothing” – 110,000 Average Monthly Searches
“Women’s Dresses” – 60,500 Average Monthly Searches
But this is just the tip of the iceberg. They could rank for branded terms such as eBay dresses, eBay fashion, etc. They could also rank for non-branded terms such as women’s dresses, fashion dresses, etc.
Then there is “level 4” or product pages. These include designer names, seasons, cuts, etc. So now they can rank for keywords such as Spring Chiffon V-neck Dresses, Women’s Long Sleeve Bandage Bodycon Evening Dresses, etc.
Digital Business Curator | Dynamic Digital Marketing & SEO | Productivity & Automation Specialist | AI & Data Driven Solutions | Cultivating the Growth of Online Ventures
1 年This is a fantastic article Thomas. I do pretty much the exact same strategy, verbatim.
Director, SEO & Web @ Docebo
7 年Solid article! I have been preaching this for years, but implementing on a client site is always a challenge due to the "List everything in the main nav so they can find it" mentality. Case studies, walk through's and explanations can help, but there is still a major fear when dealing with risk-averse orgs. Amazing how such a high-impact change can be so difficult to sell people on when they haven't seen the impact. The UX team (if they have one) can be a valuable ally in the battle for simplicity and usually they embrace the silo. After all, the impact is not in just rankings but also a much more streamlined user experience and ultimately, happier customers.