The importance of a website structure for content
What is a website structure?
A website structure is the way in which you organise the content you have on your website. Also known as site architecture, it covers how your content is grouped together and how each piece of content links to the other.
There are various website structure models which you can adopt for your website, which should suit not only your business but also your content.
Why is a website structure important?
There are numerous reasons why structuring your website is important. The most important include:
1. User Experience
Imagine visiting a high street clothing store as you need to buy a skirt in a size 14. Inside the store, there are rows and rows of clothing rails. Each rail has clothing for men, women, and children, in all sizes, all mixed together. Would you stay in that store and try to search for what you need or would you go to the store next door which has separate areas dedicated to men, women, and children, and each rail is ordered by product and size?
It’s exactly the same principle for your website. If customers find what they’re looking for with ease, through hassle-free navigation, it’s likely they’ll spend more time viewing your products and services. Therefore, a website structure is extremely important for user experience (UX).
2. Google rankings
If people are spending more time on your website pages, the bounce rate will decrease. This will indicate to search engines, like Google, that you have a great website.
In addition, having a structured website also means you can demonstrate to Google which of your pages are the most important and how customers can find them. When Google crawls websites, it follows internal and external links to determine the relationship between the pages. This helps Google understand what your site is about and discover those important pages.
3. Prevent keyword cannibalisation
If you have several pages targeting the same keyword, this can result in your pages competing against each other rather than working together. This is known as keyword cannibalisation.
However, if you apply a well designed website structure, and tell Google which are the most important pages, even if you have various content written around the same topic, it can help avoid your pages competing against each other.
How can you prepare a website structure?
Before you build a website, you need to really consider the structure of the website and put a plan in place. You shouldn’t just plan for the content you have now, but consider your future content. If you don’t, as your site grows, it will get cluttered. You, therefore, need to make sure your website structure takes into consideration future growth and content. This way you’ll know, no matter how much it grows, there’s a plan in place to enable users, and search engines, like Google, to find what they’re looking for with ease.
At Ruche, we offer an advisory service when looking at your website navigation. We can help you put a plan in place and create compelling, optimised website content that will resonate with your audience.
Why Choose Ruche Marketing?
With almost four decades of marketing experience, we’re experienced in writing compelling and optimised content for websites within a thoroughly planned website structure.
One of the projects we worked on involved rewriting hundreds of new optimised web pages for a site launch. Following the completion of the project, the website saw a 28.11% increase in new users, a 25.56% increase in organic sessions, and a 98.3% increase in the Searchmetrics visibility score.
If you’d like to talk to us about how we can help improve your website, simply contact us and one of our experts will be in touch.
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