Complete Guide on How to Create an SEO Friendly Website Structure
Do you know? A good website structure makes it easy for user navigation as well as good for SEO. On the other hand, without a good structure your website will appear cluttered and difficult to navigate. Google will also find it difficult to distinguish which content is important and which is not.
Then, how do you create an SEO friendly website structure?
Relax, in this article we will explain everything. So, you have a better chance of being in the top search engine rankings. Okay, let’s get started!
What is Website Structure?
Website structure is the arrangement of important pages on the website. Usually the structure or architecture of this website will be seen from the main navigation or menu.
A good website structure keeps the various pages on your website linked together. That way, visitors can experience a good user experience. This is because visitors can easily find the information they need.
However, website structure is not only important for the user’s point of view. It is also essential for SEO or Search Engine Optimization. Because, with a good website structure, the Google bot will find it easier to browse your website pages. This also affects the ranking of website pages in search engines.
Why is Website Structure Important?
There are at least five reasons why you must pay attention to the structure of the website. Here’s the explanation:
1. Can Affect User Experience (UX)
As we mentioned earlier, a good website architecture will greatly affect the user experience of your website visitors. Apart from being easy to navigate, it is also easier for visitors to find the content or product they need.
It’s different when visitors find it difficult to find the page they are looking for. Maybe without thinking, visitors will leave your website. Very detrimental, right?
2. Make it easy to crawl
A good website structure can not only help users find the content they need. But it also helps web crawlers to access and find the connection between content that you create. From there, it will be easier for web crawlers to index your content in search engines.
3. Can Provide Sitelinks
With a good website structure, you can get sitelinks for your website. Sitelinks are a unique display of Google’s search results. This display shows the homepage link with the important pages below.
Sitelinks are very useful for the SEO of your website. Some of the benefits include:
Improve brand reputation.
Increase customer trust.
Helps you dominate search results.
Increase click rate.
Speed up conversion.
4. Avoiding Competing Content from the Same Website
The website structure prevents you from potentially competing content (cannibal content). This kind of competition is very detrimental because it reduces the traffic that each content gets.
The competition in question may occur when you have several similar content blog posts. For example, say you have several articles about WordPress errors and use the same keywords for the content.
Similar content makes it difficult for Google to decide which content is the most important. The result is that your content competes with each other to be in the top position of Google.
The solution, you must create a taxonomic structure and good internal links. So the content is more clearly related and does not compete with each other.
Different Types of Website Structure
Many people think that only one kind of website structure is correct. In fact, there are four types of website structures that you can use. Anything?
type of website structure
Hierarchy. This type of website structure is the most common and preferred. The pages are arranged in a tree-like structure. The parent page with more general information is at the very top of the structure. The parent page is then categorized into several child pages with more detailed information.
Linear. The sequence type website structure is the simplest. All information is arranged linearly. Can be from the most general to the most specific. It can also be alphabetic. This structure is suitable for educational or training websites.
Matrix. The matrix type website structure provides many relevant links for the user. With a wide collection of topics. Users are free to choose which next link or page they want to visit.
Network. This type of website structure is more dynamic than others. With this type of structure, users can freely decide what links or pages they want to visit next. Users can have their own search experience by utilizing the search feature.
How to Create an SEO Friendly Website Structure?
There are several steps you need to take to create an SEO friendly website structure, namely:
1. Make Website Plan
Try to write down all the content ideas that you want to put on the website. Then, group all the content into more general categories. Then arrange everything so that they are connected.
2. Pay attention to the link page on the homepage
The homepage is at the top of the website structure. That means, the homepage becomes the first page that visitors access before going to other pages.
That’s why you need to link some of the most important page links to the homepage. That way, the opportunity for visitors to open important pages is greater. They will also find information more easily.
3. Make Navigation Clear and reader friendly
To have a well-structured homepage, you need to make clear navigation. There are two types of navigation that you can add to your website, namely menus and breadcrumbs.
Menu
The menu is the main navigation element on the website. Usually, the main menu is placed at the top of the homepage. To be precise, next to the exact logo or website name.
Many people use menus to display category pages that contain large amounts of content. In addition, the menu can also be used to link to a landing page or contact page.
Breadcrumbs
Breadcrumbs are additional navigation on a website. This navigation is in the form of text with a link and is usually above the page title.
Breadcrumbs help visitors know where they are on your website. Here is an example of a breadcrumbs trail on a website.
4. Use a Taxonomy
In order for your navigation to be more organized, try using the taxonomies system in WordPress or other CMS. Taxonomies are used to group content by categories or tags. So, visitors can more easily find other articles that are as close as possible.
Categories
One blog can consist of several general categories. If in an online fashion store, you can create categories such as “Women”, “Men”, “Children”, and others.
So, each of these categories can still be made in more detail with sub-categories. For example, in “T-shirts”, “Shirts”, “Pajamas”, “Jackets”, “Underwear”, “Bottoms”, and others.
Tags
Apart from creating categories, you can also use tags to group content. In contrast to categories whose structure is a hierarchy, tags have no structure.
Even so, tags are still important to use. Tags can indicate to visitors that there are other related products or posts. So, website visitors can find other content that they find interesting.
tags in the website structure
5. Don’t Forget the Internal Link!
Maybe you have started to understand that the structure of the website is related to content categorization and links to related content. Therefore, now is the time to learn how to use internal links.
Internal link is a term for linking content on your website. This internal link cannot be done arbitrarily. Two linked pages must have a related topic.
Here is a further discussion of internal links for two kinds of websites:
Internal Link for Blog
For blogs, it’s the same as compiling a hierarchy of categories earlier. You should write about some of the more general or broad-based topics first. Then you just make various posts from some of the main topics earlier. If so, you can provide internal links on content that is still related to the topic.
For example, our blog post with the topic of frameworks will have internal links with topics of various frameworks (for example: Laravel, Codeigniter, VueJs), and how to install those frameworks. So, that way visitors can learn more and more deeply about topics related to the framework.
Try to provide lots of relevant internal links to your important blog posts. So, visitors will not only stop on your important pages, but also on other related pages.
Internal Link for Online Shop
Internal links in online shops work differently from those on blogs. In an online shop, you want your visitor to stay on one page, until he or she makes a purchase.
6. Manage Your Website Structure
Even after the structure of your website has been created, your task is not complete. You still have to do maintenance. You have to pay close attention to the structure of the website, when adding new content.
In other words, website architecture is part of your long term SEO strategy. To manage your website structure, you need to do the following:
Audit your content
A content audit means that if you have an outdated article, you have to update it and then republish it. For example, there is an article that you never visited, you might consider deleting it.
But remember, don’t carelessly delete pages or articles! Because, if Google can’t find the page because it has been deleted, then your user will get a 404 error page. If so, website SEO will be bad.
To prevent that from happening, you need to redirect the URL of the page that you deleted. By redirecting the page, instead of finding a 404 error page, your users will find other relevant pages.
Avoid the Similar Keyword
Your website will contain a lot of content. From broad topics, to specific ones. Then you have to be careful with the same or very similar keywords when adding content.
If not, you could lose ranking on Google. That’s because you are competing with articles on your own web.
Therefore, it is necessary to research the performance of your content. So, you know what to do. For example, do you need to combine content with the same keywords or do a redirect.
Check back your taxonomy
Checking website taxonomy is one way of managing your website structure. Try to check again whether the arrangement of categories and sub-categories of your website is still in accordance with the content created.
For example, suppose that one category contains more content than other categories. That means, maybe you need to create a new category. Conversely, if there is a category that contains only a few pages, it is better to delete that category. You can also select move the page and merge it into another category.
Then, if you created an HTML sitemap manually, try updating it after changing the structure of your site. However, if you have an XML sitemap, re-submit it back to the Google Console.
Time to Create an SEO Friendly Website Structure!
A good website structure increases your website’s reputation in the eyes of Google and visitors. That’s why there’s nothing wrong with spending more energy to pay attention to this one thing. Whether you are just starting to create a website or when you want to rearrange the structure of the website that you are running.