When creating a web page or eCommerce it is important to have a good web architecture because it is directly related to the experience that is going to be offered to the user.
Having a hierarchy of information, a good organization, and an internal link that facilitates navigation are essential so that users can navigate fluently and find what they are looking for in just a few clicks or keystrokes.
Building a good web architecture should be a priority for any web project that wants to grow and increase its visibility on the internet.
What is web architecture?
Web architecture consists of working on the structure of a website to ensure that they are organized and linked in a coherent way , with the aim of offering the best experience to the users who browse it.
Within the web architecture there are several important points:
- The organization of the content.
- The internal link that facilitates navigation.
- The ease of use when moving around the web.
The basic structure of a web is mainly composed of its home page that acts as root (the one that is displayed when the site URL is entered in the browser) , the main pages (they are a few pages, but they have great importance for the web), and the secondary pages (which are responsible for providing specific information).
Why do I need good architecture to improve SEO?
Improve user experience
Google gives great importance to those websites that offer a good user experience, rewarding them with better positions in their SERPs.
The architecture of a website plays a fundamental role in facilitating user navigation through its content, being a key factor for the user experience. With poor internal linking and organization, users will spend a short time on the web and will return to the results page in search of an alternative that offers them a better experience.
A good web architecture Helps Google bots
A good architecture facilitates the work of Google bots and other search engines when it comes to understanding the structure, operation, and content of a website, making it easier for them to position it in a better place in their ranking.
Apart from helping the web positioning, with good web architecture, it will be easier to implement new functionalities, add or update content and perform the necessary update and maintenance tasks on every website.
Types of structures
When talking about web structures, three different types are mainly referred to:
Estructura Silo
The pyramidal structure or silo type is the most recommended at the SEO level since it organizes the web according to the keywords, grouping (in silos) all the pages by the keywords for which they are positioned.
It is a form of optimally organizing the contents of a website, facilitating their access and understanding, both for users and search engines.
In a silo structure, the main category usually attacks a generic keyword, and the subcategories attack related keywords, usually middle and long-tail keywords.
Flat site structure
A flat web structure is organized in such a way that from a parent category it is linked to a lower child category, and so on with the rest of the related lower categories.
There are many pages that use this type of structure because they are simple to build and do not require great effort. However, for search engines it is more complicated to analyze them as they have to go through all the pages , consuming the crawl budget or crawl time.
Vertical site structure
This type of structure is usually used by specialized websites where each category has a large number of subcategories due to that high level of specialization in a topic or subject.
In most cases it is not advisable to use this type of structure since it implies the creation of too many levels of depth, causing users to get lost, and making the work of crawling and indexing bots difficult of Google.
Tips to build a good web architecture for SEO
Next, we offer a series of recommendations to create a good web structure that helps improve search engine rankings:
Bet on a recognizable structure
Users are used to browsing websites with a characteristic structure that they can recognize and in which they know how to navigate. For this reason, it is important to bet on this type of structure that has elements familiar to users such as the header, the main menu, the content, or the footer…
These types of recognizable structures make the user more comfortable browsing and accessing the content of the web.
Work internal linking
Relying on a good internal linking using anchor text or descriptive anchor texts, is a good way to get users to navigate more comfortably, and that search engines can better understand the operation and content of the Web.
Access in a few steps
A very useful principle when creating a good web architecture is to make it easier for the user to reach the content they are looking for in just three or four clicks or keystrokes. The internal linking and the organization are again essential to achieve this, as well as the links to the key or most important pages of the site.
Keep in mind that the closer a content is to the home page, the more likely it is to achieve good web positioning.
Friendly for mobile devices
Today most users use their smartphones to surf the internet or to make purchases online. It is important that the structure of a website is also designed to offer the best user experience on these devices.
In relation to the web architecture for mobile devices, two alternatives can be taken:
- Responsive design . It consists of adapting the web so that it is displayed correctly on mobile devices, which have their own characteristics (smaller screen, vertical orientation and touch usability). In this type of design, the framework is first created for desktops and then adapted to mobile devices.
- Mobile first. This new concept is ideal for creating a good web architecture that adapts to current needs. It is about designing the web directly with the user experience on mobile devices in mind, and later adapting it to desktop computers (desktops and laptops).
Have experts in web architecture
The best way to create a good architecture and structure for a website is hiring the services of professionals in the sector who have experience when creating web pages or eCommerce.
It is common to make many mistakes when creating a good structure for a website, something that requires a lot of work in the future to be corrected, in addition to a high economic investment. With the services of this type of companies or SEO professionals, it is possible to build a good web architecture that provides users with the best experience and helps Google position the site in a better place in its ranking.
Which web structure to choose
Structure for company website
For corporate websites or portals, you need a simple web structure that has the traditional pages that offer information about the business such as the services or products it offers, a page with the different forms of contact, a brief history about the company, and success stories (where you talk about jobs done or clients you work with).
Structure for ecommerces
This type of website is intended to achieve sales over the Internet, so the silo or pyramidal structure is ideal to achieve greater visibility of the product sheets.
It is common for these types of pages to comment on errors with the use of keywords, which end in the dreaded content cannibalization, where several product pages compete to position themselves for the same keyword. The silo structure avoids this type of problem thanks to its structure based on silos or clusters of keywords.
To ensure that users have a great experience and that search engines can better index a website, web architecture is essential. Getting a good organization and internal linking makes it easier for users to find what they are looking for in just a few clicks, and for their web browsing to be smooth and easy, which will make the user experience optimal.
If a website does not have an optimized web structure, it will be impossible to achieve a good position in Google’s results pages, and it will be difficult to attract potential users and customers.
