Site structure is extremely important, but often overlooked when thinking about SEO possibilities. In a world where all the focus is constantly on content, we sometimes forget that how we present our content can be just as important as the content itself. After all, what’s the point of great content if no one can find it?
Presentation can be the reason people — and search engines — care about your content. A clear, navigable site structure improves user experience and helps Google understand your site.
How site structure impacts SEO
The structure of the site allows you to tell Google what you want it to see. It’s like an organized cabinet with labels — a house guest will be able to easily find where your bath towels are. Or think about a preschool play area and how all the cabinets are clearly labeled “markers,” “papers,” and “toys.”
The proper structure of the site will also allow Google to index the pages with ease, which could lead to a higher rank on the search engine due to the crawl, index, and ranking process.
How to define a website architecture that works
A good site structure should:
- Group thematic content
- Promote the most important pages
- Keep content simple and organized in a logical hierarchy
Here are the steps to create a good structure for your website:
Keyword and topic research
It all starts with researching topical keywords, in fact, to plan a structure that works you need to know the topics you are going to target and the main keywords within those topics you are trying to rank for.
Consider URLs
In an ideal world, your site structure would place the content of the semantic cluster in the same subdirectory as the pillar for that topic.
Let’s say your pillar page is yourdomain.com/pillar/. This would mean that all of the content in your cluster is located on URLs like yourdomain.com/pillar/cluster-page-1/.
This is known as URL silos and helps keep topical relevance within a site’s subdirectory, and wherever possible, it makes sense to structure your site this way.
While navigation menus exist primarily to help your users find the pages they’re looking for; they’re a great indicator of which pages are most important.
Consider the Depth of Key Pages
A good website architecture should make it easy for search engines and users to find your site’s content, and that means pages shouldn’t be hidden deep within your site.
Finding and Fixing Keyword Cannibalization Problems
Too often, keyword cannibalization is explained as a problem that occurs when you have more than one page on your site targeting the same keyword—one page is cannibalizing the other’s ability to rank, and the other isn’t performing as well as it should.
Keyword cannibalization is all about intent, and when you have multiple pages targeting the same intent, there’s a problem.
Use Internal Linking Strategically
Internal links are essential to planning an effective site structure because they help search engines understand the structure of your site and help users navigate between your site’s pages.
Create an HTML Sitemap
As a final step to establishing a solid website architecture, consider generating an HTML sitemap.
These are sitemaps visible to users while serving a list of URL links that can be crawled by search engines, further reducing the risk of orphan pages and allowing new pages to be discovered quickly.
Conclusion
Now that you understand how site structure affects SEO, it’s time to reevaluate your site structure (or if you’re just starting now, build a solid foundation). You have learned how search engines work and best practices to optimize the structure of your site.
The big takeaway is that site structure plays an important role in SEO. Remember, after spending time and effort writing great content, you want Google and your users to be able to find it!
