Websites dont have alot of time to make a good impression on visitors.

And bounce rates increased because of poor website architecture.

Thats why, nearly one out of two people leave a website after visiting one page.

So making your website easy-to-navigate:

  • Keeps your visitor’s attention
  • Visitors won’t leave in seconds
  • Prevents negative effects on your search engine rankings

In this article we will learn:

  • What is website architecture
  • Why it’s important for SEO and UX (user experience)
  • How to make a good website architecture

Let’s dive right in.

What’s Website Architecture?

Website architecture is basically the position of your website pages in a structure.

This structure is based on internal linking between your website pages.

The role of your website’s structure is to:

  • Help visitors find information easily
  • Help search engine crawlers understand the links between different pages

Your website structure helps in:

  • Visitor retention
  • Boosting conversions

So design your website structure for the best user experience for visitors.

Because, a website with the best content, forces visitors to leave if it’s difficult to find.

A website structure’s main page is the homepage, like a rooted tree graph:

  • The homepage links out to other pages
  • These pages link to other additional pages
  • Then, these pages link to each other

The Importance of a Website Structure

Website architecture helps:

  • Your website visitor’s user experience
  • Helps visitors find the information they’re looking for

This improves your search engine rankings by showing search engines your brand creates high quality content as:

  • Visitors staying on your website for longer
  • Visitors link to your web pages

Other reasons why website structure is important is:

  • Search engines can easily crawl your website
  • Visitors have the option to navigate more pages on your website
  • Page authority is spread equally with no pages left out
  • Links between related or similar topics improves topical authority
  • Lead-generating content and products are easier to find which increases clicks

Website Architecture Best Practices

  • Create a top-level navigation menu
  • Keep URLs simple and user-friendly
  • Use industry leader website architecture as inspiration
  • Keep your website consistent
  • Use pillar-cluster internal linking
  • Your website’s pages should be 3 to 4 clicks away
  • Use breadcrumbs
  • Create an HTML and XML sitemap

Create a top-level navigation menu

Two main rules to follow with navigation menus are:

  • Don’t clutter the top-level menu
  • Give the content that your menu item’s promise

For example, your blog’s “Newsletter” tab on its homepage, should take visitors to your newsletter posts or the signup page.

Then, your website should have a way to navigate back to the homepage.

Your website visitors don’t want to think too hard and waste time trying to find information.

Or they will leave because hard-to-navigate websites have high bounce rates.

So make sure to give visitors an easy web experience.

Keep URLs simple and user-friendly

Make your URLs user-friendly and avoid URL structures like:

  • example.co.uk/shop/rackets/default.aspx?lang=en&category=98a20

CMS systems create user-friendly URLs based on your page’s title, like the following:

  • example.co.uk/page-title

Also creating easy to follow subdirectories like:

  • example.co.uk/category/subcategory/page-title

Note: Subdirectories are helpful for UX but aren’t required in your website’s architecture.

Internal linking is more important than URL structures, so structure your URLs as:

  • example.co.uk/topic
  • example.co.uk/subtopic
  • example.co.uk/longtail-keyword-one
  • example.co.uk/longtail-keyword-two

Then internally link them to the parent page and each other.

Use industry leader website architecture as inspiration

Find inspiration for website architecture from popular, easy to navigate websites that are familiar to your website visitors.

For example, if you have an ecommerce store, look at how Amazon structures their website.

Keep your website consistent

Your website should be consistent when it comes to:

  • Navigation
  • Design
  • Link displays

This makes its easily for visitors to:

  • Navigate to new pages
  • Click on links

Ultimately keeping visitors on your website for longer.

Use pillar-cluster internal linking

Pillar-cluster linking is:

  • A parent page, also known as the pillar, linking to child pages, also known as the cluster
  • Then child pages link to each other, which creates a cluster

Benefits of this system includes:

  • A clear internal linking structure
  • Directs visitors to relevant and useful content

This helps your website’s visitors:

  • Understand which content the link will take them to
  • Why the content is linked from the page they’re on

But remember not to stuff keywords in your link’s anchor text.

Because Google penalises these tactics, also considered black hat SEO techniques.

Your website’s pages should be 3 to 4 clicks away

No matter the amount of pages your website has, design the architecture so visitors can go from your homepage to any page in three to four clicks.

To do this:

  • Create a top-level navigation to take visitors to your website’s main categories
  • Then, from each main category pages, they can go to sub-category pages

Use breadcrumbs

Breadcrumbs show your website’s architecture. 

From a page’s parent pages to the home page.

Found on top of the page’s title with arrows showing the visitors how they reached the current page.

Add breadcrumbs to your website using a CMS like WordPress.

Create an HTML and XML sitemap

A sitemap is a document with a list of all of the crawlable pages on your website.

Sitemaps format your website structure in a readable and crawlable way.

An HTML sitemap is:

  • User-facing
  • Same design as your website
  • For visitors who can’t find a certain web page
  • For visitors who want to see a list of all of your web pages

An XML sitemap is:

  • For search engine crawlers
  • List all URLs in a plain-text format

Websites on WordPress can use a sitemap plugin to create a HTML and XML sitemap.

Conclusion

Your website’s architecture is important for:

  • Visitor’s user experience
  • SEO

And structuring your website improves:

  • Dwell time
  • Makes visitors read more content

This could benefits your business by:

  • Improving ROI
  • Increasing revenue

So now you tell me.

How do you structure your website’s architecture?

Or

What benefits have you seen from structuring your website’s architecture?

Let me know in the comment section below.