To succeed with your organic search engine optimization (SEO), you must spend time improving the user experience and making your website easier for search engines to crawl. Both of these goals can be achieved by improving your platform’s site architecture. What does this involve? What are its benefits? What best practices should you follow? What tools should you use? In this article, we’ll answer the various questions you may have about website site maps.
What is a website's site map?
The process of creating a website is similar to building a house. You must clearly define the foundation of the structure beforehand so that the other elements work together harmoniously and successfully. Like a house plan, a website’s site map is the organization of various elements, such as pages and content. By paying close attention to this, you can link pages together and determine how your main pages lead users to deeper pages on your website. This is an essential step in creating your website. It’s also important for your organic search engine optimization.
With awell-structured site map, users can navigate your site freely. It also helps signal to search engines which content is important and which is not. Finally, keep in mind that it serves as the backbone of your website. To define your platform’s site map, you have several options at your disposal, including: internal links, hierarchical organization, categories…
Why Should You Work on Your Website's Site Map?
Your website's site map is an essential foundation that will determine its quality. Here are a few reasons why it's crucial to refine it.
Organic Search Engine Optimization
With the keywords you’ve added for each page of your website, it automatically benefits from much better organicsearch engine rankings. When a user searches for information, they’ll come across your site if the site structure is well-organized and the answers to their questions are presented in a relevant way.
One of the main advantages of organic SEO is that it allows you to promote your website and make it visible to internet users without having to spend any money. Keep in mind that organic optimization is essential to avoid ending up on the last pages of search engine results. That’s why it’s so important to work on your website’s site structure.
Indexing
To achieveexcellentsearch enginerankings, you need to improve your crawl. Crawling refers to the process by which Google’s bots scan your pages in order to index them. Indexing involves adding your website’s pages to Google’s databases based on the keywords you use.
Keep in mind that optimizing your platform requires following a few rules. If it contains too manykeywords, search engine bots will ignore your pages. On the other hand, if you don’t include enough, your pages will end up at the very bottom of the rankings. Remember that Google’s bots crawl thousands of pages every day. If you have a well-structured site architecture, they will inevitably rank you at the top.
The Site's Evolution
Your website's site map allows you to anticipate its evolution and plan future updates accordingly. If the structure is well-defined, you'll always have a high-quality platform and ensure it remains relevant to your audience.
What pages are typically included in a website's directory structure?
It's important tomap out your website's site mapbefore building it. Throughout the process, you should keep in mind the pages your platform will need. Here are some ideas to explore.
Popular Pages
First, there’sthe home page, which is essential no matter what type of website you choose. Next are the services. If you’re a business, you should have a “Services” page to showcase your various offerings, and your subpages will allow you to present different offerings. As for the “About” page, it provides more information about the platform and its value. If it’s a business website, you can use it to share the company’s history and introduce your team.
Legal pages are very important for avoiding disputes and building user trust. Every website must include a privacy policy and legal notices.
When you have a lot of pages on your website, considercreatingcategorypages. They’ll allow you to organize a large number of subpages. If you have a blog or a media site, you should create a thematic category (wellness, health, movie releases, etc.). On the other hand, if you run an online store, you should set up a product category (children’s clothing, women’s clothing, men’s clothing, etc.).
Finally, with a content-rich website, there can be an unlimited number of subpages. Depending on the type of platform you have, these will be product pages or blog posts. Of course, a website’s site map isn’t set in stone. Whether you have an e-commerce site or a blog, it’s best to clearly highlight them within your site structure.
Other pages
There are some pages that aren’t standard on every website. Depending on your industry or preferences, you can create additional pages. For example, a large organization mightadd a“Careers”pageto recruit new talent. Similarly, an e-commerce site might offer a customer portal with a profile page.
What are the best practices for building a website's site map?
To ensure your business’s success and increase your online impact, designing your website’s site map is an essential step. It’s recommended that you let a professional handle this task, especially if you have no prior experience in this area. This will help you benefit from a high-quality service that will boost your SEO and annual revenue. However, if you have some basic knowledge of website creation, here are a few tips to help you define the site map.
Finding the Right Keywords
For your business, you must identify relevant keywords. To do this, you can use online tools such asSEMRush, Yooda Insight, or YourText Guru. Start with a keyword that perfectly describes your business, products, and services. From that specific term, the tool you’re using will generate new ideas for you. The keywords you obtain will help you identify main headings and subheadings for organizing your pages.
To make the best choice, focus primarily on monthly search volume and competition. There are keywords that generate at least 500 searches per month and have low competition. These are the opportunities you should prioritize to set yourself apart from other companies that offer the same services as you.
Take Inventory of and Organize Your Website's Content
Whenredesigning your website, take stock of the existing content already on your platform. Gather it all into a folder and organize it by category. If necessary, you can edit the content to align with your sections and new keywords.
Once you have an idea of all the content you’ve published on your site, think about what you’d like to add. From there, organize it into levels.Level 1should always be your home page. Experts recommend not creating pages that are too deep. You shouldn’t go beyond three levels, but that’s just a suggestion.
Analyze the competition and design the website structure
When you’re too busy perfecting yourwebsite’s navigation structure, you might overlook some essential elements. That’s why you should visit your competitors’ websites. This will help you determine whether you’ve missed anything. If you have, be sure to incorporate as many of those elements as possible to give yourself the best chance of success.
Next, createthe structure of your website. To do this, you can choose to design it on paper or using software. If you have colleagues working with you on this project, it’s best to use a specialized tool. With software such as Balsamiq or PowerPoint, you’ll get excellent results.
Think About Organic Search Engine Optimization
This essential step will allow you to make final adjustments to your site’s structure and define the links between its various pages. Consider all possible scenarios and run a few tests. To do this, you’ll need to think about the user’s profile, their goal, the acquisition channel, andthe landing page.
Regardless of the options you choose, you must ensure that visitors can quickly find the information they’re looking for on your page. To improve your organic search engine optimization, you must ensure that your main pages remain at level 1 or, at most, level 2 in your site structure. The deeper the pages are, the lower their search engine rankings will be.
Mistakes to Avoid When Creating a Website's Site Map
Now that you know how to build your website's site map, there are a few mistakes you should avoid to ensure a high-quality structure. Here are a few of them.
Explore the levels in more depth
Increasingthe depth of a pagewill not benefit your site structure. There is no point in creating a page that will end up too far removed from the home page. To ensure that your platform meets the needs of users and search engine optimization, you should not have more than two levels of structure beyond the home page.
The fact is that when a page is too deep in the site structure, it receives very few visits. To improve your organic search rankings, this is a mistake you must avoid making in the future.
Using Taxonomies
Taxonomiesare the solutions that CMS platforms offer to people who want to optimize their websites. They’re useful because they make it easier for readers to find related content. You’ve probably already come across tags, categories, or labels while browsing other websites.
To ensure that your site structure is perfect, you need to remove unnecessary elements from the index. Although taxonomies are useful, they aren't essential. Therefore, you should do without them.
How do I modify a platform's directory structure?
There are several reasons why you might want to change the structure of your website. These could include a migration, a reorganization of your content, or changes in your business. Since your platform’s menu is the primary navigation tool, you should proceed with caution when modifying it. You should also anticipate potential issues and the consequences of your changes once they’ve been implemented.
If you plan tomodify the directory structure of an existing website, here's how to do it.
Defining the Website's Purpose
The first step in modifying your platform’s site map is to define its objective. Here, you’ll need to determine whether that objective is still the same or if it has changed. You’ll also need to think about the strategies to implement in order to achieve it. Think about the purpose of your blog or online store. You need to be clear about your goals before proceeding with the site structure overhaul.
Reviewing Available Content
To start, you need to have an overview of the content you have. Of course, if your platform has many pages, you don’t have to list them all. They likely belong to a section or category. Think about common pagessuch as “Blog,” “Services,” “Product Categories,” and “Product Subcategories.” Even if you don’t have any of these pages, you should still think about how to organize your existing content into a hierarchy.
Analysis of the Existing Structure
Often,a website’s menuperfectly reflects its site structure. While breadcrumb trails and permalinks are excellent solutions, visitors do not tend to prefer them. As for the menu, it’s widely used. In most cases, it consists of a limited number of level-1 items. To analyze it more effectively, you can organize it into a table and keep it alongside the hierarchical table of contents you’ve created.
Review the performance data for the sections, pages, and articles that make up the menu. Get insights into thevolume of traffic generated. Also analyze which elements on your homepage are most popular with visitors. This will give you an idea of the types of information your audience is looking for on your website. Understanding your visitors is essential to improving your services.
The Big Cleanup
After defining your website’s objective, gathering information about your content, andanalyzing your performance, you should conduct a final review. This review will help you determine which pages need to be improved or removed. There are many options to explore. Consider your needs and move, merge, or split sections as needed.
Should we choose to delete it or update it?
On your website, there are pages that need to be improved or simply deleted because they no longer fit within the new site structure. For example, if you’ve discontinued certain services, you should delete those pages. Make a list of the pages that are no longer useful to you and consider the implications of permanently removing them. Consider performance, external links pointing to these pages, and potential improvements you can make.
If yourorganic search rankingsare negatively affected, the best course of action would be to update the page. However, if the page should no longer appear on your site, delete it and redirect it to a closely related page.
Should the content be split, merged, or moved?
If you find that you have a lot of similar content on a specific topic, consider merging it. Keep in mind that if you move or merge content, categories, or sections, the URLs may change. In that case, set up redirects.
Analysis of Website Traffic
Aftermodifyingyour website’s site structure, the way users interactwith ithas changed. More importantly, the way Google perceives your platform has changed. You need to monitor your visitors’ behavior and analyze how Google responds to these changes. To do this, don’t hesitate to use specialized tools.
Website Structure: At a Glance
In conclusion, a website’s site map helps improve its organic search rankings and indexing. Feel free to modify your platform’s structure to achieve your various goals.
