Site Architecture Importance

Website Architecture is an important foundation for you on page optimization which gives clear pathway for visitors and search engines to understand your website. There is no meaning if we are driving quality traffic without having a optimized site architecture. Why? Read ahead…

Impact of Poor Site Architecture:

• Visitors not able to find information quickly.
• Visitors unable to navigate and find their information.
• Poses limitation for search crawlers to crawl the web pages.
• Poses limitation for search crawlers to understand the relevancy between pages.
• No hierarchical flow of information resulting in poor landing page optimization.
• The technology being used for site architecture does not support features to have search engine friendly web pages.
• Poor placement of key web elements like widgets, article detail page etc.

Key Considerations for Optimized Site Architecture:

• If you are using any CMS or other system make sure that it has flexibility to create search engine friendly pages.
• Position your web elements at effective areas of web page which can be articles, widgets, listing detail pages, etc.
• Create the top-level navigation in such a way that it can comfortably hold all unique types of detailed content for the web site.
• If you are having a large website a  directory structure with 3 level deep is optimal consideration.
• Maintain a relevancy between the top and subsequent level of category pages.
• A good taxonomy or optimized category can help visitors in finding the information quickly and give search crawlers to understand the subject matter easily.
• Optimize navigation structure like menus and breadcrumb to connect top and sub navigation levels.
• An optimized navigation will help visitor to reach any part of website from any given landing page.
• Include secondary and other pages lists like contact information and other non-centrals pages and link them wherever required.
• If you are working on revamping a website then A/B testing can be done to find which style of site architecture suit’s best for your site audience.
• The naming system of directories, files and URL structure is very important. Make sure you stick to relevancy and make meaningful words to frame them.
• Different pages will have different value and the placement of pages within site is very important.
• Usability aspects and information architecture should be built to cover the optimal site architecture needs.