At that point, from every one of your site’s primary pages, ensure they can navigate to all the sub-category pages. Once you have created a site hierarchy, you will not face any confusion when you try to add more pages at a later stage. If your website is content-heavy and has hundreds of pages, you need to keep things simple. The how to plan a website structure more complicated the website structure, the worse it is for SEO. Moreover, if you decide to stick to this page longer, you will also spot interesting and easy-to-perform tips to curate a compelling website architecture plan. Every excellently performing website on the internet went through weeks of planning and designing first.

A logical, consistently named site organization allows users to make successful predictions about where to find things. Consistent methods of organizing and displaying information permit users to extend their knowledge from familiar pages to unfamiliar ones. You don’t want your user’s mental model of your web site to look like figure 3.1. Depending on your website’s complexity, you want to see the number rising until three or four clicks away from the seed page and then rapidly declining. Generally speaking, you shouldn’t have many or any pages at all further than six clicks away. That would result in fewer visits from both visitors and search engines.

How to innovate in marketing through apps

An effective structure helps make content more relevant for search intents. It allows for a better distribution of content across the web pages according to different topics and queries. If your sitemap has errors, it may mean search engines are unable to find or process certain webpages.

Wireframes are tested by users to define whether the structure is clear and concise. Although a sitemap is the first prototype in information architecture development, you still have to create advanced prototypes by wireframing and data modeling. A sitemap is a way to illustrate the hierarchy of content and display navigation. Index pages pattern – consists of a home page and equally important subpages.

Search engines can easily index your pages

This way, users don’t need to work too hard to find the content they want. In fact, 94% of surveyed users said they consider easy navigation to be the most important website feature. By linking from one page to another, you communicate to Google which pages are related. And if you link to a particular page many times, Google will see that you think it’s important. This is similar to Google encountering a disorganized website. If the structure doesn’t make sense, Google may not understand the purpose of each of your webpages.

They can also be presented in XML or HTML formats to help search engines understand your website structure and find relevant information. XML is barely readable by users , but HTML sitemaps look like usual webpages and can be read by humans and search engine robots alike. On a website, links are the unique web address or URL for a specific piece of content, folder, or directory. The link allows human and non-human visitors to navigate to the content directly. It provides users with many options on where to go next and is best navigated via internal links or the search field, less via a navigation menu.

Site architecture vs website information architecture

The latter are lengthy, where product landing pages shouldn’t be that long. These pages only need to show what your visitors need to know to be convinced. Landing pages are the pages you want your audience to find when they search for specific keywords you’ve optimized for. For instance, we want people who search for ‘free SEO training’ to end up on the page about our free training called ‘SEO for beginners’. You need to approach the content of your most important landing pages differently than your other, regular pages. Your most important pages are probably often very relevant to mention on several pages across your site, so you’ll link to them most often.

• For example, the /tutorials/ URL leads users to our Tutorials page, and /tutorials/how-to-make-a-website is a full URL for our How to Make a Website article on Hostinger Tutorials.
• The image below gives an example of a simple linear-style site structure.
• Certainly, one should be aware of the existing similar experiences, but it will be much more productive for the business to be guided by the user needs.
• Users should be able to access content on your website in as few clicks as possible .

For a single page, that organization may come in the form of information architecture rather than full-on site structure. Using one of the four main website structure types makes it super simple to provide that experience. Web structure is how information is organized and interconnected on a website.

What is a website: Examples, Types and Structure

One of such rules is to limit the browsing “width” and “depth”.The “width” here is the number of options at each browsing level. You should limit the browsing “width” by working out the cataloging system and setting the organization principles in the upper browsing level. A well-developed cataloging system will reduce the browsing “width” at the lower level of the site structure, simplifying the search by category at the “upper” level. The peculiarity of the “bottom-up” approach is that it adapts the website structure to already existing content, which can interfere with future content adding.

Use a mega menu – Mega menus are a common solution for sites with extensive product lines. These menus expand into organized lists of options so the user can https://globalcloudteam.com/ access information much more quickly. They can then navigate through several layers of subcategories without ever clicking away from the navigation menu.

What are the different types of website structures?

At the same time, the footer is also a chance to make one last appeal to users who are on their way out . Therefore, something like a newsletter sign-up form is also a possibility as are social media icons, a search bar, recent posts, or a call to action. However, don’t overdo it and add too many links, as it can overload the page experience.