free html design Free html design templates
Hey guys, today in this article, we are going to share some tips to improve your website architecture. So keep reading.
Whenever you hire a website design company or get branding agencies to help you, you must ensure that your website architecture is smart, subtle, and perfectly balanced with content, visuals, and the right message.
The right kind of website architecture can build or break your business. Many website redesign services also recommend working on the best website architecture to ensure a smooth-running operation of your business.
Let us start by understanding website architecture.
A website’s architecture in laymen’s terms means how the information and the pages are organized, structured, and linked. It is a vital part of on-page SEO and user experience and should not be overlooked.
Your website’s architecture should not be haphazard and cluttered as you only have a few seconds to grab your attention of yours.
There are many ways to improve your website architecture as different branding agencies will suggest to you. Here are the top 8 tips for how you can improve it:
8 Tips For How You Can Improve Your Website Architecture
Table of Contents:
2. Optimize The Structure of The URL
3. Reduce The Number of Clicks For Important Pages
6. Have An Internal Linking Strategy
8. Do Not Forget Canonical Tags
1. Use Easy Navigation
Bad website navigation is usually always the reason why a user leaves your website. If there are a lot of pages in the navigation bar, the user gets not only confused but also irritated. They get overwhelmed looking at the bad navigation clusters on the header.
You need to have a clean, simple, and basic navigation bar for your website. It should make the lives of your users easier by helping them and reducing their efforts of finding things on your website on their own.
The navigation bar has to portray the site’s structure quickly at a glance to the users as well as show the services that you offer and your products. Always assume that the users have no time for anything so don’t make them think too hard about where to find things.
Keep your top-level items very minimum. They should be a list of important pages. Make it easier to find specifics also by not going crazy with sub-categories. Make the sub-categories also relate to the headings. Also, include a link to the homepage in the navigation bar.
2. Optimize The Structure of The URL
To ensure that your site is organized properly, structure your URL. The URL shows the hierarchy to the users and also the bots and helps them see where each of the pages on your site belongs. The structure of your URL should be very straightforward if possible.
By keeping it organized, you are ensuring that it is easier to see what a page is all about and what it is related to on your website pages. When creating a URL, keep in mind that it has to be under 130 characters.
Separate the words with hyphens and also if possible, avoid using any numbers. Make the URL descriptive and include keywords in them. Also, do not forget to keep the names of the categories consistent,
3. Reduce The Number of Clicks For Important Pages
It truly does not matter at all how many pages are there on your website. The visitors should be able to go to your homepage as well as the most important pages on your website quickly. Users usually leave the website after just checking out a single page.
We want them to stay. We want them to explore. How do you do that? You make it engaging and interactive at the same time with less number of clicks. The content should be accessible through not more than 4 clicks at a time.
The user should be able to visit the page with very few ticks. This type of s structure is also better for SEO and also for the users. It helps the bots quickly index the pages on your website.
4. Use Categories For Pages
Category pages are usually found on e-commerce websites. They help you keep your site organized in the long run no matter how much time has passed. You don’t have to worry about new slots of pages in the existing structure because of categories in pages.
These category pages actually make it easier for the users as well as the search engines for understanding the layout of your website. This is a great opportunity for ranking. Even if you don’t have an e-commerce platform, you can still add category pages.
5. Build A Sitemap
A sitemap is basically a list that shows all the crawlable pages on your website. It is an important element of your website architecture because it portrays your website to both the users and the bots.
There are HTML sitemaps and there are XML sitemaps. HTML sitemaps are those that are meant for users and bots both. They explain the site structure and the pages. You don’t even necessarily have to include all pages in this sitemap.
An XML sitemap is meant for the use of Google crawlers so that they have a better understanding of your website’s organizational structure.
6. Have An Internal Linking Strategy
For connecting your pages together, the best way is for having a great internal linking strategy. When you link the pages together, you bring context and relevance to them and also allow your users to freely roam around the site.
Also, you have to link the pages and categories in the navigation bar. Each website page should be linked to at least a couple of pages. You can use a descriptive anchor which is rich in keywords for leveraging as much value as possible from the internal link.
7. Add A Search For The Site
It is of course extremely important to have search functionality on your website for making it easier to navigate. It is a functionality added for improving the user experience and improve conversion rates.
8. Do Not Forget Canonical Tags
Canonical tags should not be forgotten when working on improving your website structure. They are a way to let the search engine know that you have multiple versions of the same page on your website.
They are there to reduce the chances of duplicate content by a significant amount and also a way to improve your site. You can use canonical tags to clarify which page should be ranked without letting the site engine index all the pages and bring up issues of duplication.
Conclusion: Improve Your Website Architecture
Website redesign services usually always keep these 8 points into consideration when it comes to building a proper site architecture. It is not only essential for a good user experience but also important for ranking and SEO and the optimization of your website.
