Website structure for SEO: from semantics to design

The site structure is the collection of all the pages of a website arranged in a logical and hierarchical order. The correct structure helps users navigate the site more easily and quickly find the information they need.

A well-designed website structure and a correctly chosen semantic core are the most important factors for successful promotion in search engines. Therefore, it is important to pay attention to this stage in order to avoid possible problems in the future during optimization.

Types of site structure

For commercial websites, there are two main types of structure that complement each other: vertical and horizontal.

The vertical structure includes pages with products, services, categories and other sections that are important for any online store or service. This is the basis of most of these sites.

An example of the vertical structure of an online store:

A horizontal structure consists of pages that group together products or services that share common characteristics. These could be pages with filters or categories, for example, products of a certain color, size, etc.

Example of vertical and horizontal directory structure:

The process of creating a site structure

To create the correct website structure for SEO, you need to go through several steps:

  • Analysis of the current site structure (if the site already exists);
  • Studying the range of goods or services;
  • Collection of marker requests;
  • Analysis of competitor sites that occupy top positions for queries;
  • Parsing all queries, data cleaning and creating a semantic core;
  • Development of the site structure.

Let's look at each stage in more detail.

Analysis of the current site structure

If the site already exists, the first step is to check all the main pages: product cards, service pages, articles section and other important elements.

You need to pay special attention to tagged pages, which often play a key role in SEO. These pages contain products or services with general characteristics, but are not included in the main categories.

Studying products and services on the site

If you are working with a new site or a topic that is unfamiliar to you, it is important to study in detail all the products or services that the company offers. This will help create an accurate and correct site structure.

Communicating with clients, managers, analyzing competitors and studying materials about products and services - all this will help you understand what features and characteristics need to be taken into account when creating a structure.

Collecting marker requests

Start collecting inquiries by imagining yourself as a potential client. Think about what phrases people might enter into search engines to find your products or services. This will help identify key queries.

Further, these marker queries will help analyze competitors, as well as create a semantic core for further work.

Analysis of sites from top positions

Analyze sites that already rank high for important queries. This will help you understand how they organized their structure and which pages are optimized for the most frequent queries. Compare the results with your current site structure or create a new approach.

For example, if you are developing a site for apartment rentals, analyze competitors' sites that offer apartments in certain areas or tags (for example, metro) and create similar pages for your site.

Formation of the semantic core

After collecting marker queries, it is important to analyze, clean and group them using tools such as query parsing services. This will give you an accurate idea of ​​what queries you should promote.

Don't forget to take into account the frequency of queries and their synonyms. It is important to leave only the most relevant and frequent queries for each page of the site to avoid duplication or cannibalization.

Formation of the site structure

After you have analyzed the queries and compiled a semantic core, the next step is to create the site structure. To do this, it is convenient to use mind mapping programs such as XMind.

Ideally, the site structure should fully cover all possible search queries and satisfy user needs. The more detailed the structure, the higher the chances of success in search results.

Conclusion

Correct website structure is the basis for successful search engine promotion. Mistakes at this stage can lead to serious problems later.

The main problems that can arise with an incorrectly designed structure are:

  • Search query cannibalization is when the search engine is unable to determine which page is relevant for a specific query;
  • Mixing commercial and informational requests - attempts to promote informational requests on commercial pages;
  • Inability to promote low-frequency queries - the lack of a tag structure can make it difficult to promote such queries.

If you have any questions about creating a website structure or SEO promotion, do not hesitate to contact the SEO studio "SEO COMPUTER" with any questions by email info@seo.computer.

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