5 tips for creating a good website structure
Websites with a good and strategic structure achieve a higher ranking in the search engines.
Very often when planning a website, the page structure is overlooked and then web designers create beautiful websites that don't have many visitors. To avoid your website becoming a beautiful but lonely place, you need to make sure that you create an optimized and SEO-friendly page structure.
Why is the website structure so important?
a good page structure gives your website the SEO foundation that improves organic searches
a good page structure helps the search engine crawler to index your pages, which in turn improves the search results
a good page structure gives your website internal links, for a good user experience, as your user can easily find what they are looking for
Here are my 5 tips for creating a good website structure
Keyword research - during the planning process and before you even start designing your website, you should conduct thorough keyword research that tells you what your target audience is interested in. From these keyword results, you can work out a good page structure.
Page hierarchy - think about the pages you need with the keywords in mind. Create a hierarchy in a table or on a whiteboard that will later be part of your navigation and URL structure.
URL structure - create your URL structure based on this hierarchy. Your URLs need real words with the relevant keywords for each page.
Navigation - your navigation should follow the hierarchy of your site. Make sure to create a logical and easy-to-understand navigation that allows your visitors to reach the desired pages or content as quickly as possible.
Internal links - these internal links help your users to navigate your website. They also establish a hierarchy of information around the website and tell search engines which pages are important.
Examples of necessary pages:
Home page
Every website has a homepage. It is the first page that most visitors see and also the most important page for a good search engine ranking. This is because search engines rate the content of your homepage higher than the content of any other page. Your home page should give a clear summary of what your website is about, what your products or services are, and it should give clear instructions on how your visitors should use the features of your site. It should also include links to every page on the site wherever possible, and each page should link back to the home page.
Contact page
As the internet is generally quite impersonal, it's important that your visitors feel comfortable. If they see how you can easily be contacted via an email address or phone number, they will be more inclined to get in touch with you than if they are frustrated every time they try to find out your contact details. If visitors are traveling to your office or premises, it's important to also include directions, maps and relevant helpful information about whether or not you provide on-site parking.
Registration or inquiry form
You should make sure that your website contains an online form at the top level of your navigation system. This makes it easy for visitors to ask questions, make offers or appointments or even give you feedback on your website, service or product.
Products and services
Your product or service pages should describe as precisely and accurately as possible what exactly you have to offer. Remember that you need to make it easy for your visitors to choose what's right for them and, if your website is an e-commerce enabled website, to click through to buy your products. Make it easy for your customers to express their interest by allowing them to contact you.
Information pages
On your information pages, you can make sure your content contains keyword-rich phrases to encourage search engines to revisit and crawl your site. These information pages should normally contain links to the following:
Info: Company profile: company history, mission statement, team, position on the market, memberships in trade or professional associations.
Frequently asked questions (FAQs): This is a good opportunity to highlight your expertise in your particular field.
References: These serve to prove your credibility. Visitors are more likely to buy from you if they have read a little about your background and like what others say about you. I can't emphasize enough that testimonials are really powerful and should always appear prominently on your website.
Case studies: Include your examples of how you have helped your customers in the past.
A clear and logical page structure helps you to attract new prospects and customers to your company by ensuring that your visitors get to the information they want with minimal effort.
If you need help with planning a good site structure or how your structure could look like in a Squarespace website, feel free to book an appointment!
