How to Optimise Your Site Structure for the Best SEO Results
An optimised site structure is key for allowing search engines to better understand your website and its content. They also help search engines read and index your pages faster and with greater understanding that allows you to rank for more search terms. On top of increasing your site’s click-through rate, having a logical site structure is the way forward.
So where to begin with restructuring your site? Here we have a step-by-step guide to show you how to get started.
Separating pages
Provide a list of pages you’ll be having, or the current way your sitemap looks. Have blogs, news and secondary pages allocated into their own categories. This should allow you to see where pages should go naturally, like for example having dedicated pages for product categories, departments, blogs and services, depending on what your website is all about.
A news website will want to have a different looking structure to a clothing store, so it’s important that you learn how to categorise each section of your site appropriately. Ensure you do prior research before starting to structure your site.
Focus on hierarchy
The hierarchy of the site’s structure is going to be integral to its success. The Home page may work well on its own but you could also have an About Us page, your business’ aims and mission statement as well as any other pages of interest. This guide can help you decide what to include in your menu.
The hierarchy of the pages should be no more than 2 or 3 levels deep. Having too many clicks to reach certain pages makes it difficult for the pages to be crawled, and users are less likely to click through to find these pages.
Categorise your content
If you’re a big blogger, or a massive clothing company, you’re going to want to categorise the content on your site so that people can easily go through to the subject they’re keen to find. If someone’s looking for a new dress for example, they might want to categorise by the length of the dress, style and size. These can allow customers to filter through to the most specific content they need and are more likely to engage with the website and ultimately make a purchase.
Breadcrumbs and other SEO optimising
Breadcrumbs in the SEO world are links that clearly show a path that’s been taken, usually noticed at the top of a webpage. This helps search engines clearly see a path that the user has taken to reach a page on the website.
Meta descriptions and titles are still important when building a site structure, as well as incorporating your top keywords for the site’s pages. Internal linking across a website will further help your pages in being found by search engines, as well as showing the level of intent these pages have and their relation to other pages on the website.
Site structure is important and gives you a lot more benefits to your SEO over time on top of your regular optimising schedule. But with a range of different ways you can structure your site it can be tricky to pinpoint how best to lay out your own site. Should you need an expert opinion, chat with us today to see how we can help you with your site structure, SEO and further optimisation techniques.
