Some website owners just leave a few pages of it plain and sloppy because they think it won’t matter much. As time passes, this simplicity and carelessness spreads throughout the site and a complex website remains. If you do not take the time to think about your website and page structure, you may encounter a similar situation. A poorly organized website is confusing for users and has negative SEO consequences.
If you have a new website or a website that is not fast enough, you may prefer to spend some time on your website by reading this news. With this news, you can improve your SEO and protect your site for years to come.
What is Website Architecture?
Website architecture is the structure used to organize a website. Generally, the hierarchy of this structure is in the form of a pyramid.
At the top is your homepage, which is the most important page of your website.
On the next level are your next most important pages (categories) and the content you want to see in the main menu of your website.
At the third level, there are sub-categories under the categories. Then there are other single pages containing their products.
A website architecture helps you organize your website. While priority is given to the pages that are in the most important position in terms of visibility on your website, it is easier for the visitors to navigate between the pages.
What is the Importance of Website Hierarchy for SEO?
Users have a better browsing experience on well-organized websites. This way they stay on your website longer and your bounce rates will improve.
Considering that Google’s most important ranking criterion is user experience, you should offer your users a good browsing experience and prevent them from leaving your website immediately. In addition, thanks to a clear site hierarchy, Google’s spiders can crawl your website more easily. Websites with intuitive, clear categories and subcategories are easier to understand by Google’s spiders. This way, spiders will understand which pages are more important and how they relate to each other.
How to Create an Intuitive Site Hierarchy
If you have already determined the hierarchy of your website, it will be easier to optimize your website for SEO. However, if you have a large website that you are actively using and you have deficiencies in hierarchy, it may be a bit challenging to transform your existing structure into a new one.
Create an Organizational Plan
The first step you need to take is to determine what you need to do to organize your website in the best way possible. This section will be relatively easy if you have a small website with less than 10 pages. But there are still important things to do. If you have a website with tens or even hundreds of pages, this can get a little more complicated.
Your first goal should be to keep your website hierarchy as simple and straightforward as possible. Unless you have a very large website with thousands of pages, your hierarchy should be at most 3 levels.
Remember that an ideal user should be able to go to the page on your website in 3 clicks.
In most online stores, products in any category are added to the end of the category name. For example, let’s say you are an online bookstore; The URL of a math textbook should be roughly like this:
www.samplebookstorewebsite.com/index.html
Such a URL will earn you extra SEO points because it also contains keywords, and Google will better understand what the page is about.
Define Your Primary Categories
Think carefully about the main categories you want to divide your pages into:
It should explain the different pages and products included in it.
It should be intuitive enough for any visitor to your website.
For example; Let’s say you are an online bookstore again. You can choose to categorize books by length or cover color. However, your visitors will find websites that are categorized more like publishers, authors, genres more intuitive.
In other words, avoid choosing random categories. Present the most valuable information for users with categories.
Identify Sub-Categories
Most of the websites can only be content with the main categories without the need for subcategories. But if you are an online bookstore, you will also need many subcategories. visitors; They can more easily find books they like by visiting more specific sub-categories such as Science Fiction or History.
Try to think like your customers when considering your main categories and sub-categories. Identify the categories that will be most useful to them and make sure your category names are not too long.
Minimize Clicks Between Pages
One of the most important features of a good website hierarchy is to have a site menu that will make navigation easier for visitors who want to navigate your website. If visitors can see the main menu and all related sub-categories on any page of your website, they can easily navigate your website without clicking the ‘back’ button and without unnecessary clicks.
As we mentioned above; You should organize your website so that the visitor can navigate your website as they wish with just 3 clicks.
Use Internal Links Strategically
By using Internal Links, you can ensure that your website is indexed more efficiently and that Google better understands the relationship between your pages. This will increase your SEO success. Separate
