Having a good site structure is a very important part of your SEO. So how do you go about developing great site architecture? Here are things you should do:
1. Extensive Keyword Research
What do you know about the niche you are trying to build pages for? Have you taken the time to find out how visitors search for particular terms in your target market? To do this effectively, get seed keywords and run them through a good keyword tool (Google Adwords keyword tool is a good resource for most people). From the results returned, weed out key phrases that do NOT fit your site concept. Thereafter, create a hierarchy of those left. Keywords with higher volumes should come first. Next, arrange related but lower volume keywords under each “Big” keyword. This should give you an overview of your site structure.
2. Follow A Logical Sequence
Arranging keywords according to their search volumes can give you an overview of your site structure if you sort them out well. However, you should NOT depend on that only. Make sure you also follow a logical sequence.
For example,the key phrase “cheap car insurance” definitely has a higher search volume than “what is car insurance.” However, it is NOT logical to think of cheap car insurance if you don’t know what car insurance is all about. Therefore, in creating the tiers of your site, an article on “What is car insurance” should be closer to the home page than an article on tips to get cheap car insurance.
The point here is to think like a searcher who is totally new to your niche. What would be the most logical place to start? That should be content for your homepage. Still using “Insurance” a logical tiered structure would look like this:
- Homepage (1st tier) — Target keyword: Insurance; Topic: What is Insurance And Why Do you Need It?
- 2nd tier (Pages that link directly from the home page) — Target keywords/phrases: Car insurance, home insurance, health insurance, long term care insurance, life insurance, travel insurance, pet insurance, etc.
- 3rd tier (Pages that link directly from 2nd tier pages) — Target keywords/phrases for car insurance: cheap car insurance, car insurance for teens, car insurance for college students, etc
- 4th tier (pages that link directly from 3rd tier pages) — Target key phrases for cheap car insurance:cheap car insurance for teens, cheap car insurance with moving violations, cheap car insurance poor credit, etc.
Follow a logical sequence and your visitors will have a better experience and deliver responses that will have a positive impact on your search rankings.
3. Make Your Navigation Easy- But Efficient
If you’ve done a good job of creating a logical sequence, then you’ll have easy but efficient navigation. But in addition, you can have sub-level home pages.
For example, using our 2nd tier keyword “car insurance.” You can either have links to the 3rd tier articles (cheap car insurance, car insurance for teens, car insurance for college students, etc) in the navigation bar, have them as a table of content at the end of the 2nd tier article or just blend them into that article with links to the appropriate articles. You can have a blend of all the options. But whichever you choose, make sure it is easy for your visitors to get back to the homepage and other very important pages.
This is just an overview of what it takes to have great site architecture. You can commit to learning more about this critical element of your online business or you can leave it in the hands of a good web development firm.
