Site Structure

Site Structure

Website Structure and Architecture for Search Engine Optimization

Website structure and architecture plays a vital role in the search engine ranking of a website by optimizing the search engine process. Website structure is the logical flow of the website. Clean website structure, developed while keeping search engine optimization in mind, will significantly contribute to a high ranking in the search engine results page.

The structural layout of the website makes a huge difference for the user as well as for search engines. Generally, the small websites that evolve gradually into large, complex ones seem to fall into the category of poorly constructed websites.  This is because as additional pages, categories and links are inserted into the old layout and structure of the website, the original structure is lost. Such sites are viewing positively by search engines, as these sites make for a bad user experience.  Search engines rely on having repeat users, so do not like to send people to sites that are poorly constructed. Crawlers of the search engine can determine and understand the layout and structure of a website through sitemap, URL structure and file hierarchy. Therefore, it is very important to have logical and intuitive website structure in order to have a good search engine ranking.

File Layout:

Like any other structure, website structure also needs to have a functional, aesthetical and technical balance. Generally, a flat website structure is recommended for more effective website architecture.  There is a level system that can be used to achieve this balance in a website. The homepage of the website is the first level, leading to categories being treated as the second level of the website. Search engine crawlers primarily crawl to links only three-four clicks away from the homepage. Therefore, it is a best practice to create a 3-4 tier layout of your website to attract the search engine crawlers.

URL Structure and file name:

Logical and relevant file names are as important as the file layout. Names of the files also act as the URLs for web-pages. URLs create the primary and secondary navigation structure of your website as they point to the relevant pages in the website. The descriptive and relevant file name will give the clear idea to the search engine what the file or webpage is all about.  This allows your website to show up in relevant queries.

There are simple and easy naming conventions for the website files and URLs such as:

•    Avoid too many keywords into the file name and stick to most relevant and logical keywords.
•    Make it short, memorable and descriptive so it can be easily communicated.
•     Keyword rich websites are always viewed well by the search engines. However, avoid overstuffing your website with keywords, this will confuse the crawlers.
•    Link pages to appropriate keywords within the content.
•    Keep the file name dash separated rather than using underscore. The reason for this is simply that with an underscore, Google returns the page only when searched with the exact name. For example: ‘website_structure’ has to be typed in exact words to get the page as a search result, whereas if the keyword searched in Google is ‘website structure’, Google will also list page named ‘website-structure’. Therefore, using dash instead of underscore is more viable option for Google search engine.
•    Prevent infinite spaces in the URL: A dynamic linking method is infinite and perpetual. If you are using a dynamic method to create URLs, it may lead to infinite loop. For example: if you are using dynamic URLs for every month to create a calendar, it will lead to an infinite space creating dynamic URLs for future months as well.  Each time the search engine crawler will find a calendar page it will get into infinite links to future calendars. Therefore, it’s important to prevent infinite spaces through URLs. One more important aspect is, Google crawls every website with a certain budget that can be in terms of bandwidth, kilobyte or number of pages. The infinite spaces will consume the entire crawler budget without providing any value to your website.

Meta description:

Meta descriptions are an important aspect of the website structure as meta keywords will describe the page to the user as a search result. Meta keywords should specify clearly what your site is all about.

Appropriate header tags:

Header tags of your website help the search engine define and detect the topic of your website, therefore, pay a lot of attention to creating these header tags for search engine optimization.

Alt tags:

It is a good practice to create relevant alt tags for all of the images in your website. Images of the main navigation can also play an important role in the ranking of your website. Alt tags will direct the keywords to this important and main area of navigation in your website. You must also create an alt tag for header image to have a greater impact and better search results. An alt tag to the header image creates some matter for the spiders, when they crawl into the header and find some content rather than just a static image.

Avoid duplicate content:

Search engine will easily figure out the duplicate content on your website and Google can also penalise you for publishing it on your website. Search engine looks for original and relevant content. Therefore, elimination of duplicate content is an important aspect of website structure and architecture to make it search engine friendly.

Robot.txt file:

As you can figure out from the extension, robot.txt is a text file and not an HTML file. Robot.txt is a place in the root directory of the site that specifies the search engine crawlers which page to crawl and which are the pages not to be crawled. Although, every page is crawlable by default, there can be certain pages that you don’t want to be indexed by Google. Robot.txt will prevent the bandwidth wastage of the search engine by defining the specific pages to be crawled.

Utilize cascading style sheets (CSS):

Along with the file hierarchy structure and navigational elements of the website structure, clean tableless coding by utilizing cascading style sheet (commonly referred to as CSS) will reduce the extent of redundant code development and also places your webpage Content to the top of the coded document. This will help the search engine to analyse the page Content for efficiently for indexing.

So as you can see, the structure and development of your website are vital components in the success of your SEO strategy.  If you think you current website needs to be made more SEO friendly, or are looking for assistance in developing a new SEO optimised site, then give Black Ops SEO a call now.