Creating a SEO-Friendly Website Architecture
It doesn't matter if you have a large or small website, good structure creates a seamless user experience that search engines and website visitors will appreciate. Site architecture is a foundation principle of technical search engine optimisation (SEO). Rather then publishing pages and posts at random, you establish a SEO friendly site architecture that guides users to your content, while helping Google crawl and index your pages.
Website architecture is how you categorise, structure, and link the content within your website. It is often called SEO architecture, facilitating user navigation, while helping search engine crawlers understand the relationship between your website pages. By creating clear hierarchy on your site, you send signals on what content is the most important and how it relates to other pages on your website. It helps search engines understand what is on your site, so they can crawl, index and rank your pages.
Website structure plays a very important role for your users and search engines.
The main goal of having a website in the first place is to present your products and services to any prospective customers searching the internet. Once the visitor arrives on your website, it needs to be easy for them to find what they are looking for, increasing the chances of converting them into a customer. If your website is frustrating to use, your visitors are likely to abandon your page, increasing your bounce rate, which negatively impacts your ranking in search engine results pages (SERPs).
Creating website structure that mirrors the sales funnel, creates an effortless journey for your website visitors.
A logical website structure improves your ranking in search results. When you structure your site with hierarchy, clear topic clusters, and internal links, it is easier for search engines to crawl and index your pages, understanding the context of your content. Google has confidence in displaying your site in search results, when they can understand your website clearly.
When you connect your website pages to create topic clusters, you show authority in your industry. If you offer numerous pieces of content that cover all aspects of the same subject in depth, linking them together, helps search engines identify your business as an expert.
Creating pillar content is an important step to website architecture. Pillar pages, or a main page that6 covers the broad aspect of a topic that links to more detailed pages, enables you to highlight your important content, helping those pages rank for high volume keywords. Pillar pages tend to attract top of the funnel traffic. You can then draw your website visitors deeper into your website with long tail, low volume keyword optimised content that is internally linked to the pillar page.
The pages that have the low search volume, long-tail keywords also attract visitors at various stages of their customer journey, helping them connect directly with content that answers their search queries.
Keyword cannibalism is a term used when a website has more than one page that competes for the same keyword. This is often a result of a disorganised website. Websites with clear organisational structure has spaces for different content, making it easier when creating a content strategy, while preventing the risk of overlaps in keywords that could result in a lower ranking in search engine results pages (SERPs).
By updating your site architecture for SEO, you can help your business thrive online. It is a very complicated and complex process that requires expertise across several disciplines. Partnering with Genie Crawl can help you with your strategic planning, project management, and implementation of technical SEO, ensuring your site improves your online visibility and reaches your target customers. Contact us now to find out more.
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