What is Website Architecture? 8 Easy Ways to Improve Your Site Structuring

Getting lost sucks. It doesn’t matter if you are in a city or in a corn maze. The ambiguity of not knowing where you are and what might happen next can make you break in a cold sweat.

Website visitors feel the same way when they land on a messed up website. Almost every second person leaves a website after visiting just one page. We don’t have much time to make a good impression on a user, and poor site architecture is guaranteed to increase bounce rates.

It is important to make your website intuitive and easy to navigate in order to get your audience’s attention. If you don’t, they’ll ricochet in seconds. And if people leave your site because your user experience is messy, search engines won’t think much of you either.

If you need help structuring a website that will appeal to an audience and rank on Google, you’ve come to the right place. We will show you what website architecture is, why it is important for UX and SEO and how you can develop a sound architecture for your own website.

Without question, your website structure plays a crucial role in retaining users and increasing conversions.

By implementing a website structure, you can design your website for the user experience. You may have the most amazing content, but when users can’t find it, they go to a competitor’s website.

A typical website structure looks like a rooted tree diagram with the home page as the root directory. The pages linked from the home page are branches, and from there additional branches sprout on each page. These branches are then connected to each other.

This is what it usually looks like:

Why is website structuring important?

A solid website architecture strengthens the user experience of your website. If you structure your website intuitively, users can find the information they are looking for seamlessly.

If your user experience is strong, your search engine rankings will show up too. Users spend more time on your website linking to your web pages. These are important indicators that your brand is creating quality content.

In addition, a solid website architecture:

• Helps search engines crawl your website effectively.
• Promotes full navigation of the website by providing more pages to users.
• Distributes “page authority” more fairly so that a page is not left out.
• Strengthens the current authority due to the strong internal linkage structure between related or similar topics.
• Increases conversions by making it easier to find products and content that generate leads.

Let’s look at some best practices to keep in mind when designing your site’s architecture.

1. Create a simple top-level navigation menu.

First, don’t expose too many top-level menu items. Second, make sure you provide the promised content based on the name of the menu item.

For example, when your users click the Email Marketing tab on the home page of your blog, they are likely to be directed to a list of email marketing posts. From this page, you’ll also need to design a simple navigation path back to the home page of your blog and the home page of your website.

Check out an example from our own website below:

The menu is divided into three simple menu items: Software, Pricing, and Resources. In the Resources tab, users can find various resources that are divided into different names.

Don’t make your users think too much. A website that is difficult to navigate has a high bounce rate. Users don’t want to waste time finding information on your website. If they do, they’ll just go. So practice empathy and ensure an intuitive web experience.

2. Keep your URLs simple and easy to use.

No user wants to read a url like this:

example.com/store/rackets/default.aspx?lang=de&category=98a20

It’s important to create user-friendly URLs. Most CMS systems like CMS Hub and WordPress will automatically create a friendly URL based on the title of your page. It will usually read like this:

example.com/page-title

You can also create subdirectories that are easy to follow.

example.com/topic/subtopic/page-title

Tip: While subdirectories are useful from a UX point of view, they do not have to reflect the architecture of your site. Internal links are more important than the URL structure. This means that you can structure your URLs as follows:

example.com/topic

example.com/subtopic

example.com/longtail-keyword-one

example.com/longtail-keyword-two

All you need to do is connect them to each other and to their parent pages using internal links.

3. Model your website architecture according to the top players in your industry.

Your customers are used to the website architecture of the major brands in your industry. So if you run an ecommerce store, analyze how Amazon structures their website and emulate it. Your website will be more familiar and easier to navigate.

4. Keep your website consistent.

The navigation format, the design principles and the link displays of your website should follow a uniform pattern. If you keep these elements, your users will stay on your site longer by making it easier for them to quickly navigate to new pages and click links.

5. Implement the internal link model for pillar clusters.

In the columnar cluster model, you have a parent page (the column) that is linked to child pages (the cluster). These subpages are then linked together and form a cluster.

This model makes your internal linking structure clearer and effectively guides users to other relevant and useful content. When users come across an internal link on your website, they should immediately understand what content the link is pointing them to and why that content is being linked from the page they are on.