Website Design and SEO are closely linked which means the better the design the more effective is an effort made towards the SEO of a website. It is necessary to design a website keeping SEO in mind. The most important web design factors affecting SEO are the usability factor, easy navigation, good content and functional website. The other important website design factor affecting SEO are URLs, avoiding duplicate content, generating an XML sitemap and designing a website that is compatible for all devices.
The overall structure is very important for a successful SEO strategy. Besides the obvious factor of making a website easier for a visitor to navigate around and find necessary content (having good usability) the design should also consider search engine crawling. Site structure essentially makes up a framework of a website and is the basis of how it is organized; A good site structure has many benefits and helps improve a websites-rank on Google Search results and the search results on many other websites as well. A good website-structure also ensures that the websites stay in order even when scaled up.
SUMMARY
The overall structure of a website is very important for SEO and some of the factors affecting it are usability factor, easy navigation, good content and functional website. It helps improve a website’s rank on Google Search results.
Significance of a Good Website Structure
- Website Structure Acts as a Guide: A good structure is essential for search engines especially Google, since it helps search engines locate appropriate content easily. This also makes it easier for any search engine to list it, rank it and display it at the top of the search results giving it an edge over the others. When a search engine crawls a website, a good site structure ensures it can figure out what it is about, detect the relation between pages. A good structure is very important since the website-crawling done by Google and other search engines is not manual but done using bots.
- Website Structure Emphasizes the Content: A good site structure is very important and essential for Google and other search engines since without that a search engine will not be able to differentiate between the content and the website is simply a page of information without any structure or meaning. A good structure that includes a well prepared sitemap informs a search engine of important content which requires attention. Thus, it lays emphasis the correct information to compete with other similar websites giving you a better chance.
- Google Empathizes on User Experience for SEO Ranking : A website that offers a good user experience tends to rank high in Google search results and that of other search engine results as well. A good user experience is possible only if a website has a good structure to start with. Just as the visitors prefer a website that is easy to use, navigate around, displays relevant content without much effort; so do the bots that crawl the website. This ensures a it ranks well in any search engine results.
- Better Crawling of Web Pages : Crawlers from search engines are automated bots that crawl a website with an aim of detecting the structure so that it can provide better search results. Such crawlers try to obtain as much information as possible and assess it in many ways using all information they receive. For example, a Google bot crawls a website to detect the structure and is able to discover the overall website-structure, its navigation, what the website is about and even use a sitemap if available. Hence a good website-structure is crucial for efficient crawling.
- Site Structure is Important in More Ways than One : It also ensures good linking since a website with good structure will have all the links organized in a good structure with good site hierarchy and receive the necessary keyword coverage. A good URL structure is also important for search engines and hence it is advisable to use meaningful words in the URL instead of special characters and also keep it as short as possible.
SUMMARY
A good website structure offers various advantages such as it guide users; website structure emphasizes the content and user experience, better crawling of web pages, ensuring good linking, and many more. It also makes easier for any search engine to list well the website.
The Bottom Line
SEO is very important for any business website to promote well in search engine for better visibility and good conversions and for that a good Website Structure is must required. We hope this useful SEO tip will help you in optimizing your website for Google.