Site Architecture

Importance of Site Architecture for SEO Success

Site Structure & Planning: Promoting Positive User Experience

Building a website can be likened to that of building a house. A well-built house will only be as good as the plans and blueprints supplied by the architect. As in many things, meticulous planning can go a long way. A poorly laid out house can end up feeling like a maze and negatively impact on the living experience. It's similar to a poorly laid out website. For example, it can be frustrating for a user having to click through 20 pages when it could have only taken two or three clicks. User Experience playing a role as a ranking factor is not a surprise; it's logical really. (SEO + UX = Success) Search Engines aim to send users to websites that satisfy their search requests and leave the sites they visit having had a positive experience.

Further plans are in the pipeline to integrate User Experience as a ranking. Keep on reading.

The Google Page Experience Update: User experience to become a Google ranking factor

This ranking factor won't be live until 2021, at the earliest. More is explained about this update on SearchEngineLand (click here for the article) 

Google refers to Core Web Vitals and it's not surprising the vitals are centred around stability, security and speed. Focussing on mobile speed and mobile friendliness are not to be underestimated for this update. The problem with better web speeds and marketing teams looking at sites on desktops or big projector screens in a boardroom neglects the mobile experience which can be a fatal oversight. Then the strained web designer claiming "oh we will sort mobile later". When designing and styling a site three times (Desktop, Tablet, Mobile) it's easy to empathise with the web designer and how much pressure they are under. Then you will have the SEO demanding on more content, more text, more FAQs etc but usually creative, marketing types wanting bigger visual, more video, less text.

What is meant by Site Structure?

Depending who you ask you will get a different answer. For example, some may say it's simply your navigation. However, one would hope your SEO Consultant would be looking at the wider context. Let's start with your target audience, the search terms and keywords they may be typing or the questions they may be asking their voice assistant. This leads into the subject matter and topics related to these search enquiries. 

One Page Websites (Single Landing Page Sites)

One page websites in last 5 years definitely were an emerging trend and bit of a fad. They're short, visual, succinct and can look nice. Ticks many boxes for many businesses and for someone businesses it's enough. However, when trying to give more information to your website visitors and ranking for search engines this style of website can be very limiting. With all the site content being on page it can be a lot for a search engine to digest. It's essentially having a house and everything is in one room, which can easily get messy. 

Let's use the example of an SEO Agency (hopefully something we know about). SEO has many closely related areas which can be broken down into comprehensive sections. There is SEO Audits, Technical SEO, Content Marketing, Digital PR, Site Speed, Mobile SEO, Video SEO etc etc. Trying to explain all those topic hubs on one page and effectively would be an absolute mess or at very least a scrolling nightmare.