If you are a website owner, you should ensure that your website does not suffer by checking for and avoiding these standard website structure no-nos.
What is a good site structure and why is it important?
Before we move on, let's first define good site structure and why it's important.
A good website structure refers to how intuitive and straightforward it is for users to navigate your website. When you have a good website structure, your web pages are logically linked together, making it easy for users to find what they need on your website with minimal clicks and page loads.
Now, there are many reasons why you might want to prioritize good website structure, and not just for SEO reasons, but we'll get into those later.
According to Sytian Productions, one of the most important reasons why you should care about good site structure is the overall user experience.
Think of it this way. If you go to a website and can’t find what you’re looking for within a minute (or even less), you’re likely to leave the website immediately. You want to avoid this type of situation by having a clear website structure.
When it comes to SEO find your telephone number data not paying attention to the importance of a good website structure can lead to poor visibility in search engine rankings and hinder your overall digital success.
A clear and intuitive site structure helps keep users engaged and lowers bounce rates. When your bounce rate is low, Google or other search engines are more likely to feature your website in search engine results pages, or SERPs.
Additionally, search engines rely on website structures to effectively crawl and index your pages.
Therefore, when there is a clear sense of connection between your website's web pages, it makes it easier for search engines to understand the hierarchy of your content, determine its relevance, and rank it accordingly.
Now that you know why it's important to care about how you structure your website, it's time to address some of the website structure mistakes people often make that affect how well your site is optimized for search engines.
#1. Not using breadcrumbs
As mentioned earlier, UX and SEO go hand in hand, and with a great site structure with breadcrumbs, you will both provide better UX and be SEO-friendly at the same time.
If you don't know what breadcrumbs are, they are visual clues on a web page that show you where you are on the website and what pages you went to before arriving at the web page you are on. You can usually find them in the upper left corner of a web page, before the title or heading of the content you are viewing and below the navigation menu of the website.
It gets its name because it shows you a "trail" of the web pages you've been to, so you can get to where you are and know where to go back if needed.
While it may not seem like that big of a deal, both literally and figuratively, since the breadcrumbs are meant to be small, that doesn’t mean the rewards of having breadcrumbs are negligible.
For example, if someone is not satisfied with what they see on the current web page, they can go back and start their search from the beginning with the help of breadcrumbs. This feature is useful for eCommerce stores that have extensive websites with large inventory.
#2. No mobile-friendly design
Not mobile friendly website design.png
Source: arngren.net
As you must have noticed by now, when you work on a better UX design, it also has a good impact on your SEO. For example, a mobile-friendly design is another way to get better SEO with better UX design .
With more mobile users accessing the internet than desktop users these days , it would be foolish not to invest in a mobile-friendly design for your business website.
If your website is not responsive, if the screen size of the web visitor changes, this website visitor will eventually leave your website or as soon as they arrive. Sometimes, they will leave without even seeing anything on your website. After all, poor mobile compatibility of a website also shows itself in poor loading time.
For mobile users, these poor experiences can lead to higher bounce rates and lower engagement metrics. As mentioned earlier, search engines pay attention to user experience and rank websites that are more mobile-friendly higher in search results.
To avoid losing potential customers and hindering the growth of your online presence, pay attention to the importance of a mobile-friendly design. It is vital to ensure that the structure of your website complies with modern standards by implementing responsive design techniques that seamlessly adapt to different screen sizes and devices.
#3. Hide homepages
Have you ever come across a website that has fancy animations on its homepage, redirecting you from one smooth transition to another when you want to go to a particular web page on their site but you can’t find it? Isn’t this annoying for you as a web user? It makes you want to leave the website as soon as possible.
This is what we mean when we talk about how you shouldn't hide your homepages, even if you have some of the best-crafted website graphics and animations known to man.
When a website’s homepages are hidden or buried deep within the site structure, search engines may need help crawling and indexing them appropriately. A well-structured website ensures that critical pages are easily accessible and visible to users and search engine bots.
By hiding main web pages, you make it harder for search engines and your target audience to understand the relevance and importance of those pages.
When homepages are hidden, it becomes difficult for search engines to understand the importance of these pages to other content on your website.
Your navigation menu is there to help you present your home pages quickly so that your web visitors can find what they need as quickly as possible, which is why these home pages are in your navigation menu in the first place.
#4. Too many unnecessary categories
A common mistake that large websites, especially those in the eCommerce sector, make is having too many category pages in their navigation menus.
When you have too many categories or category pages that are irrelevant or useless to users, it creates confusion and dilutes the overall structure of your website. When you have too many unnecessary categories or category pages, search engines may need help determining the primary focus of your site, resulting in lower rankings.
If search engines have a hard time determining the structure of your site, what more could users want?
Additionally, having too many irrelevant category pages can lead to keyword cannibalization.
Keyword cannibalization in SEO is when multiple pages on your site compete for the same keywords, causing them to compete against each other in search engine results. As a result, these pages can rank poorly and ultimately hurt your SEO efforts.
You can avoid having too many category pages with planning. Even if you have a large product inventory, if you are an ecommerce store, you need to figure out which ones are your main category pages.
#5. Creating too many tags
Tags help organize your website’s content, so how can having them hurt your SEO? While tags help organize and categorize content, too many tags dilute their purpose in the first place.
Each tag represents a separate category or topic, and when there are too many tags, the main focus of each tag on your site is diminished.
Additionally, an excessive number of tags can lead to duplicate content issues. When you assign multiple tags to pages or posts with similar content, search engines may interpret this as duplicate or thin content.
