Structuring your site

This guide takes a step back from fiddlier things like search engines and content to instead think about the fundamental way your website is organised. I see a lot of websites where the owners don't seem to have a solid plan about organising the pages of the site, so they end up with dozens of links in the footer or dozens of categories which can be really hard for a visitor to navigate. And I also see plenty of sites which really just amount to one or two useful pages, when there's probably loads more the business could write about to attract visitors.

It might be useful to try and think of your website structure like a tree. Your homepage is the trunk, which branches off to your main categories, and specific products or services branch off those. The site has a heirarchical structure which makes sense to both humans and search engines.

Why does this matter? Well most importantly, it makes it easy for visitors to find what they need. If your homepage links through to 100 different products, worst case scenario your visitor has to scan a hundred links to find what they want. But if it links through to ten categories, and each of those links to ten products, the most amount of links your visitor needs to read is twenty.

The tree structure is also really useful for search engines, because the links logically group your products together. If all of your blue widgets are under a blue widgets category, then Google knows to show those kind of pages for blue widget searches, and not your red widgets section.

The other major benefit is that a tree structure is easy to manage as you grow. You'll know where each new bit of content belongs, meaning you can have a really large site covering a lot of topics without getting lost.

Planning Your Site Structure

So, lets discuss how to plan and implement an effective website structure that works for both visitors and search engines!

First up - planning. This can save a lot of trouble later. First, you should list everything your site needs to include. This might be things like your products, your services, your locations, and any other key information about your business.

Group these items into logical categories based on what visitors to your site might expect. So you might have "Products", and then under that "Red Widgets", "Blue Widgets", and "Green Wotzits". And under "Services" you might have "Delivery", "Repairs" and "Sales". Under "Locations" you might have "Bury", "Prestwich", "Whitefield".

If "Blue Widgets" contains a hundred items, you might want to consider breaking it up into "Blue Party Widgets", "Blue Wedding Widgets", and so on. The idea should be to never give the customer an overwhelming amount of potential things to click.

It's also important to be mindful of the order of the items on each of these items. For some categories, like products, you might want to put your most profitable or popular items first. For others, like delivery areas, it might make more sense to list them alphabetically. Think about what visitors to your site are likely to expect - don't just randomly order things.

There's an industry saying that you might have heard, that everything on your site should be reachable within three clicks from the homepage, and in my experience this is usually well doable unless your site is absolutely massive.

And if your site is very small then maybe you don't even need that, and everything can be reached within one click of your homepage. But probably, if you're trying to write content to do well on search engines, you'll quickly grow past this size.

Navigation and Menus

It's likely that your site has a main menu that appears on every page. This is crucial real estate on your site, so you need to make sure every page it's linking to is worthy of the spot. I'd generally advise linking to your main categories from here, because it's the first place visitors will look to click. And I'd generally advise against linking to pages that only a minority of visitors will be interested in - link to those pages from a branch instead.

Common Pitfalls to Avoid

Let's talk about some common pitfalls that you can run into when structuring your site. The first and most serious is orphaned pages - this is when you've got a page on your site that isn't linked from anywhere. Search engines struggle to find these pages, and so will your visitors. Each page on your site needs at least one link from elsewhere to it.

The next problem I see a bunch is when there are multiple pages that are basically about the same search phrase. For example, you might have a "Event Widgets" category which contains one "Event Widget" product. Google will have to pick one of these to show for "Event Widget" searches - so its better to be focused and just have one page which matches that term.

Some sites also end up with lots of categories with barely any content in them, which means the pathway to their products passes through a page which is hard for Google to categorise. You might instead want to merge these thin pages into one larger category with more depth.

Interlinking Your Content

Let's talk about interlinking for a second. It's one thing to have this overarching tree structure to your products, but you can also provide value to your visitors by interlinking the various branches when it makes sense. For example if one product is regularly hired alongside another, you should probably link them together in their descriptions. By interlinking your products like this you make it really easy for visitors to discover other products they might be interested in.

Summary

So, there we have it - a hopefully solid approach to structuring your website that works for both visitors and search engines. It's not just a technical consideration, it's about creating clear pathways for your visitors to find exactly what they're looking for, and it's a way to know exactly where to logically fit in any new information you think your site should contain.

Don't worry if you need to revisit and adjust your structure as you go! That's a normal part of your site's evolution. The important thing is to be thinking about this deliberately, rather than letting your site grow wild and chaotic.

If you'd like help structuring your website for better navigation and SEO, get in touch.