The better your site structure, the better your chance of ranking higher in the search engines. Every website has some “structure.” It might be a rigorous and streamlined structure, or it may be a disorganized jumble of pages. If you are intentional and careful with your site structure, you will create a site that achieves search excellence.
In this article, We share some of the best advice on creating a powerful site structure. The tips below will help you create a site that appeals to users, gets crawled and indexed by spiders, and delivers the best SERP listings and rankings possible.
“I cannot give you the formula for success, but I can give you the formula for failure. It is: Try to please everybody.”
– Herbert Bayard Swope
Why structure matters
As We’ve worked with hundreds of clients over the years, we’ve been surprised at how often site structure is overlooked. On the one hand, it’s one of the most crucial aspects of a site’s SEO performance, but on the other hand, few webmasters and owners understand what it means to have a site structure that enhances SEO.
We are going to share a few of the reasons why site structure is so crucial and then get into the how-to of developing your own SEO-friendly site structure.
A good site structure means great user experience.
When you take away the colors, fonts, kerning, graphics, images, and white space, good site design is really about a great structure.
The human mind craves cognitive equilibrium — being able to put pieces logically together, finding things where they’re expected, and locating what they are seeking. Thus, a strong and logical site structure is cognitively satisfying to users.
As you know, the more appealing your site to users, the more appealing it is to search engines, too. Google’s algorithm uses information from searchers to rank your site. If your site has poor CTRs and low dwell time, it will not perform well in the SERPs. By contrast, when a user finds a site that they like — i.e., a site with great structure — they don’t bounce and they stay longer. An accurate site structure can reduce bounce rate and improve dwell time, both of which will lead to improved rankings.
A good site structure provides your site with site links.
Site links are a listing format in the SERPs that show your site’s main page along with several internal links indented below. You’ve seen them before.
