How To Develop An SEO-Friendly Website Structure
Hooking visitors to a website needs thoughtful implementation of UI/UX concepts. A well-structured site ensures a seamless user experience for the visitors, which helps generate leads.
To achieve top website ranking, having steadfast SEO optimization is quintessential. Getting the desired SEO-optimized website needs a solid site architecture at its foundation. So, creating your SEO-friendly website architecture can enable you higher rank in a Google search. In this article, we will see how to do that.
Website architecture
Website architecture represents the process of structuring your website visually and content-wise, where every piece of content is categorized well organized and inter-liked. A website with an intuitive architecture makes the browsing of content within the website extremely straightforward. This, in turn, assures a better ranking in the search engines making it an SEO-friendly site. Also, building a hierarchy of content makes it easy to find important content first.
Importance of site architecture
Every element in your website architecture has a vital function in improving the user experience and making the site easily crawlable. Here are some factors to consider for good site architecture.
#1: Navigation: A well-structured website is easy to navigate. A logical site structure always ensures smooth operability and leads to quality conversions. So, focusing on the navigation menu becomes a priority for achieving a better site structure.
#2: Hierarchy: Intentional content hierarchy enables the user to find what is most important effortlessly. Creating readily accessible pillar pages where comprehensive information is given elaborately with links to other related content attracts more traffic.
#3: URL structure: The nomenclature of the content title must be thoughtful to make the URL structure SEO-friendly. If your page title is keyword relevant and descriptive, it will easily rank better by the virtue of a clear semantic relationship with other pages on your site. A well-designed URL indicates well-organized content.
#4: Linking: Creating relevant backlinks from reputable websites will accomplish your site a perceived authority in the virtual space. Also, interlinking pages within your site will increase the relevance of your content to the target audience.
Create your own website architecture plan
Here is an easy-to-implement guide to creating a robust website architecture plan on your own.
#1: Define the scope of the project:
Firstly, lay down the foundation of your plan by defining the scope of the project and its scalability prospect. Remember, starting a website from scratch is very different than revamping the structure of an existing site. In the latter case, you may need to think of a website migration plan and allocate your resources accordingly.
#2: Have your expectations documented:
To expect a specific outcome, your goals should be clear. Before you lay your hands on the site structure, decide what is it that you want to achieve at the end. Point out the changes that you want to see in terms of SEO optimization for the growth of your business.
#3: Recognize your target audience:
Publishing a webpage on the internet with the vision to generate leads requires thorough contemplation and recognizing the target audience. If your target audience is not specific, your structuring efforts may not be fruitful.
#4: Perform in-depth keyword research:
Avoid the nuisance of reverse engineering SEO for your site by consistent keyword research. Conducting comprehensive keyword research will facilitate immediate results and save your time and resources.
After you discover relevant keywords to use on the site, build your navigation menu to highlight the primary topics covered in your pillar pages containing the high-volume keywords. Next, create clusters of subtopics inside the pillar page to rank for long-tail keywords.
#5: Plan information hierarchy and site structure:
Upon planning pillar pages successfully, you can achieve the possibility of scaling your content spectrum through defined categories. Furthermore, you will be able to logically interlink your content for getting a sounder response from crawl bots.
Final Thoughts
To achieve a robust structure that reflects the configuration of your sales funnel, avoid common mistakes like keyword cannibalization where two pages on the same site compete for the same keyword. Among other things, strategically interlinking your content and creating potent backlinks from prominent websites to enable a much higher rank in the search engines. This way, you will achieve top-of-the-funnel traffic soon.