How to Improve Website Architecture in 8 Easy Ways?

In simple terms, website architecture is the visual and technical structure of the website. Web designers generally use the term while planning, designing, and developing a website. Technically, a website architecture is a logical website layout created per the user and business requirements. It is a collection of components that comprise a website and its services to the user.

You can classify the components of website architecture into four parts

• Visual − It includes the user interface, buttons, colors, and other visual elements.

• Functional − It includes the type of services the website will provide.

• Technical − It comprises the interfaces related to the server, memory, storage, and communication.

• Security − It includes planning of designing a website that ensures secure transactions and access control.

Importance of Website Structuring or Website Architecture

A website architecture helps in improving the user experience. Users are more likely to stay on the website or make a purchase if they can access it seamlessly and find the information they have been looking for.

Not only that, but a well-structured website also helps crawlers from search engines to crawl your website faster, which also helps with search engine rankings.

In short, a robust website architecture can help

• Users to find more web pages to visit, allowing them to stay on your website longer

• Creating a solid site authority about a specific topic through strong internal linking

• Increasing conversion rates by making it easier for users to search for products easily

• Distributing page authority seamlessly and equitably

• Search engines crawl your website faster

8 Ways to Improve Your Website Structure

Keep the navigation menu simple

First, you should minimize your top-level menu items and ensure the contents are under the right menu. For instance, if you label a health-related article in a lifestyle menu, your users will likely need clarification and leave the website if they can't find what they have been searching for.

It would help if you aimed to provide the information you promised your visitors. For instance, if your users click on the "entertainment news" tab on your blog site's homepage, you should structure your site so that your users get directed to a list of entertainment news.

Simplicity is key here. A complex menu will only confuse your visitors, leading to a higher bounce rate, which will further hamper your search engine ranking.

Keep the URL neat and easy-to-follow

Make sure to keep the url structure simple, easy to remember, and logical so that it conveys perfectly with its contents. A simple and intuitive url structure helps your users and search engines understand and quickly identify different pages on your website.

For example, if a user visits the "fashion" page on your website, the URL should be −

Website.com/fashion\

If the article topic is "10 ways to dress this summer", the URL should read −

Website.com/fashion/10-ways-to-dress-this-summer

CMS like wordpress, cms hub automatically create a user-friendly URL per your page's title.

Note − Internal linking plays a significant role in the URL structure, even more than subdirectories. That means you must create content that connects them to each other and their parent pages.

Follow the pillar-cluster internal linking model

The pillar-cluster model comprises the pillar (parent page) linking out the cluster (child pages) followed by linking the child pages with each other. This model simplifies your website's internal linking structure and helps the user to find similar content relevant to the content they are reading.

For example, if a visitor is on the "how to develop abs in 3 months" article, you can link articles like "five superfoods to develop muscles" and "five exercises to get ripped faster" and so on.

As a result, users spend more time on your website, increasing their chances of purchasing.

Note − Although you may have seen a website having keywords hyperlinked with internal links. You should avoid this, as this practice is known as Black Hat SEO. If google suspects it, it can penalize your website.

Taking inspiration is not a bad thing

If you run an ecommerce store, taking inspiration from other ecommerce stores like amazon is not bad. Go through the site architecture and see what makes the website more accessible. You will learn a lot. You don't have to copy the entire structure but can emulate some of its functionalities and navigational structure.

Don't keep changing your website structure

You should keep your website structure the same, especially the navigation format, link displays, and design principles. Regular visitors often coming to your website will only confuse them, and worse; they would think it's a different website.

Keep access to pages within a couple of clicks

Ensure your visitors find the information they have been searching for with minimal typing and clicking. Even if you have hundreds of thousands of pages on your site, you should design it so your visitors can access them within 3-4 clicks. You need to trim down your top-level navigation and keep it minimum for this. Make sure to use easy-to-follow subcategories.

It's even better to use a sophisticated search algorithm within the website, including a drop-down menu. So that every time somebody searches for something, they get to see suggested pages with entire topics. For example, if a user searches "Europe," the search bar will display all the topics related to the keywords such as "best place to visit in Europe", "best beaches in Europe", "cheaper hotels in Europe", and more.

Use breadcrumb navigation

Breadcrumbs is a secondary navigation system that assists users in understanding the relationship between the location page (such as a product page) and higher-level pages (such as the category page).

In breadcrumbs, your visitor can return to the main category page (health, for instance) if they don't like an article and start over.

Create a sitemap for search engines

The sitemap of your website is a document containing the lists of the page that search engines can crawl or have crawled. It keeps your site's structure in a readable and crawlable format. An HTML sitemap is helpful for users who can't find a specific page and can check the list to find the link for the page. Meanwhile, an XML sitemap is designed for search engine crawlers. It included all URLs in text format, allowing search engine crawlers to crawl your link faster.

Conclusion

Unfortunately, most websites are not well-organized and look like a mess. Your site may have the best content, but if your visitor cannot find them, they are useless. This is why creating a sound site structure is the need of the hour because google and other search engines rank your site based on several parameters, and structure is the most significant one, next to contents.