Untangle Your Site Architecture So It’s More Crawlable
Over time, your site architecture can become tangled and full of dead ends, making it difficult for search engines to crawl through it.
Untangling it will allow your content to be indexed more quickly.
Setting up site architecture early can make all the difference when it comes to your site’s performance, especially if you own an ecommerce site or even a blog having a million pages.
If you build your site architecture properly from the start, it’ll be easier to optimize your site for search engine traffic.
However, if somehow that wasn’t possible, don’t fret; there are still some things you can do to untangle your site architecture.
But first…
How Important Is Site Architecture for Your Rankings?
Site architecture is how your site is organized and linked together.
A well-organized site is easy for users to navigate and for search engines to index.
That means your site will rank higher in search results.
In general, if you have a small website with a few pages and links, then website architecture will matter less regarding rankings. A flat website architecture with basic navigation links in the navigation menu will be enough for such websites.
However, when/if you have many different categories with million pages, a lot of pagination starts to pop up, and the link equity won’t be well distributed.
That’s when fixing your site architecture can significantly benefit your SEO and search engine rankings.
How to Untangle Your Website Architecture Map?
1. Improve Your URL Structure
A well-organized website is essential for good site architecture.
It helps search engines find and index your pages so that they can be included in search results.
And – it also makes it easier for people to navigate your site.
That’s why pages on the same site level should have URLs to reflect that.
Otherwise, you send confusing signals to Google about how your content is categorized.
So, don’t leave your pages sitting at different site levels on an ad hoc basis.
Bring the URLs of the site’s myriad of pages in line with one well-defined deep website architecture so that search engines can understand – and therefore index – your content.
2. Limit Click Distance by Clustering Your Content
Your site’s architecture is its skeleton—the foundation on which everything else (including web pages like a category page or a parent page) is built.
As a rule (it’s more of a suggestion than a law), you should ensure that important information is not more than three clicks away.
The reason for that three-click rule is twofold;
- Your visitors are unlikely to be willing to click through 15+ different pages to find the information they need, or else they will search elsewhere.
- Limiting this click distance makes sense from an SEO standpoint too. Search engine algorithms consider the distance between a page and your homepage. The further away it is, the less important it is considered by the bots.
This may mean bringing together related content and linking out to them from a ‘pillar topic’ page.
That page should be within a couple of clicks of the site’s homepage, meaning that a huge collection of related pages could be brought within a few clicks.
Content clusters make it much easier for visitors and search engines to maneuver a site’s content.
3. Fix Your Internal Linking Strategy
Most people think of website architecture as the hierarchy and organization of pages on a website.
But from a technical SEO perspective, a good website architecture is the structure of a website that allows search engine crawlers to index pages correctly and efficiently.
A well-organized website will have clear navigation and logical linking between pages, while a poorly organized website will be difficult for crawlers to understand and index properly.
This can lead to lower rankings in search results.
That’s why it’s essential for you to analyze what links people are clicking on, so you can understand which ones are most useful for readers.
Once you have identified the most useful links, you should start the process of identifying the category, and sub-category pages that you know are needed.
Push in internal links on the website’s pages following the website structure using the design principles.
4. Properly Format Your Images
When you’re formatting your images for the web, there are a few things you need to keep in mind.
First, make sure the file size is as small as possible without sacrificing quality.
By adding dimensions to the images, you can reduce the category pages from 25+ MB down to a more acceptable 2-4 MB per page.
This can significantly help increase page speed and improve the user experience while reducing the strain on the server.
Second, choose the right file format.
JPEGs are best for photos, while PNGs are best for graphics with fewer colors.
Third, add alternate text (alt text) to all of your images.
This is the text that appears if an image doesn’t load, and it also helps search engines understand what’s on your page.
Conclusion
A well-organized website and URL structure are essential for good site architecture.
This means creating a logical website structure that is easy for both users and search engine crawlers to understand.
A good website architecture helps improve your website’s usability, SEO, and overall user experience.
You’ll want to make sure that you have a clear separation between content, navigation path, and functionality.
If you don’t have this separation in place, then it’s going to be very difficult to implement any SEO strategies or tactics that are going to help improve your rankings.
So if you’re looking to make your site more search engine friendly, be sure to follow the tips mentioned above.
