Site Structure and SEO: 10 Ways to Win with Google

Gone are the days when pages thrown at a website were enough to make it appear on the first page of Google. Now, you have to be intentional about the structure of your website if you want to stand out of the cesspool of websites found online. A good website structure improves user experience and attracts Google’s crawlers to your page.

Here is why a good site structure is an important element in SEO and 10 ways you can structure your website to win with Google.

Why Site Structure Is Important

According to Search Engine Journal, an organized website compliments all other SEO efforts greatly. A solid site enhances your chances of ranking and gives your users an easy time navigating your website. How exactly does it achieve this? Take a look  at the list below:

• Helps Google and other search engines understand what your site is all about
• It avoids the scenario of competing with your content (you can eliminate similar blog posts and decipher what is important from your categories)
• It helps keep track of changes on the website
• It promotes a great user experience
• It provides your website with site links

How to create a good website structure

Now let’s look at the ten leading ways of creating the kind of structure mentioned above.

1. Outline Your Hierarchy

Neil Patel, one of the smartest SEO gurus in the world, has always sensitized website owners on the need to use a hierarchical model to organize their websites.  This works even better if you are starting things from scratch. Use Microsoft office, whiteboard, or software such as OmniGraffle and Visio to map out your structure. While at it, keep these three things in mind:

• Make your structure logical
• Keep your main categories not less than two and not more than seven
• Balance the number of sub-categories on each category

2. Have Fewer Clicks

People have become more and more impatient as they browse the internet as observed. If you want to grab their attention, try to make them take no more than four clicks to get to your page. No matter the size of your website and the content therein, you can organize things in such a way that the number of clicks stays in the range of 2-3.

3. Purge, Purge, Purge

Coupon binders aren’t the only things that need purging; websites do too! As seasons change, new trends emerge. You would do yourself a disservice if you keep content from the ancient ages on your website. Premier SEO Ninjas recommends having a good understanding of what to remove and when to remove it. You can redirect your URL if you intend to keep links from old content without having to actually keep the content.

4. Focus On The Website Menu

Before users get to the juicy parts of your website, they need to check the menu first. It really is a powerful navigation tool that deserves more attention that it currently gets. Premier SEO Ninjas has observed that adding subcategories to your menus is an act of prudence provided they don’t overcrowd the menu.

5. Add Breadcrumbs To Your Pages

According to Edwin’s guide to breadcrumbs, you can enhance the outlook of your website by utilizing breadcrumbs on your pages. These are clickable links usually seen at the top of the page or post. They help customers know the location of your website.

6. Links need some TLC too

Link structure is often given little attention when creating websites. Doing this can spell the difference between good SEO and bad SEO. There are a few things to keep in mind when adding links on your website:

• Make them relevant
• Don’t go overboard with keywords on your links’ anchor text
• Minimize duplicate links

7. Examine Your Subcategories

Your categories should be of the same size. Huge pillars make for a poorly-organized website. Make them small and equal in size to avoid your site looking unbalanced.

8. Watch Out For Duplicate Pages

Duplicate content is a sure kiss of death for any website. Google’s Search Console is a tool used to find and eliminate duplicate content on websites. As a general rule, always create your own content from scratch to win with Google.

9. Length of your URL

Here are some great facts about URL length from Quicksprout:

• URLs containing 37 characters on average were ranked in the first 10 results
• URLs containing 36 characters on average were ranked in the first 50 results
• URLs containing 38 characters on average were ranked in the first 100 results

From the statistics, you have better chances of making your page appear on the first page of Google if your URL has 37 characters. With the input of good SEO experts, you can achieve this seemingly hard nut to crack.

10. Have A Good Internal Link Structure

We can’t adequately emphasize the importance of internal links for SEO. You need these links to direct crawlers to you. When structuring them, think about the following:

• Let the links point to your categories
• Know which pages are move valuable to you and link there
• Utilize anchor text for your links

The structure of your website certainly determines whether you will go far with SEO or not. If you want to put your best foot forward, you have to go beyond keywords and think about the outlook of your website including your subcategories, menu, internal links, URL, breadcrumbs and the overall hierarchy.