The best websites are created taking into account the interests, needs, and expectations of visitors.
Text, visual design, organization and navigation should all work together to allow visitors to find key information and reach a goal quickly and easily. It is also necessary that the structure of your site is promotes good SEO to attract search engines. To do this, you need a clear site structure that is easy to navigate, follows a hierarchy of content, and is natural and intuitive for visitors. This post will give you some tips on how to do this for your own website.
It’s a bit like a tree, with many small branches and sub-branches attached to them. A hierarchical architecture of this form focuses on the organization and structure of the content so that a user can navigate it intuitively. Such an architecture can range from a simple brochure-type site to a complex information system. As a marketer, you have many opportunities to influence the ease and speed with which visitors reach your goal. The two main ways to achieve this are to identify and define the objectives and expectations of visitors from the start, and then organize the content of your site according to these objectives and expectations. Identify and define the objectives and expectations of users Start by defining the objectives of your website and the path that you want to take to users: Identify the “who” (stakeholders and target audience). Identify the “why” (your goals). Identify the “how” (functional requirements of the website). User testing is highly recommended at this stage, and it is essential to do so before you or a designer develops mock-ups and reading / printouts for your website. Remember, the goal is to make this site beneficial to your users, and often what we think is important . .. isn’t really. Knowing how your users actually behave and how they intend to use your site will also help you better understand the overall goals of your site. Organize the content areas of your site Once you have understood the objectives and the ease of use, the organization of the content will be done in the blink of an eye. Knowing what content you need helps you define “sections” or “groups” of content through which, ultimately, you will build subsections and sub-pages of your website. To help you plan and visualize the sections and sub-pages of your site, you can draw the structure. Whether you’re drawing it on a whiteboard, in PowerPoint or Excel, using professional design tools like Visio. This activity will allow you to determine the best possible site structure and move the items around until you find what makes the most sense and fits your goals. Designing a site structure based on the user experience makes SEO easier. Think about what SEO really means these days: Optimizing the search experience, with the ultimate goal of increasing conversions. Above all, you optimize for users and the user experience. Then, and only afterward, you optimize for the search engines, which allows you to increase the likelihood that your content will be found by the right audience. Like Google, your site is only good based on the experience it provides to users. Who do you think Google is going to push to the top of SERPs? The site that users like or the one they don’t know how to use? Thus, a well-structured site is designed to meet the expectations of users and, ultimately, help them (and therefore you) to achieve a desired goal, whether it be filling out a form, making a purchase, to learn about a product or service, to subscribe to a newsletter, etc. To achieve this, be sure to create public and XML sitemaps for your website, and always keep the visitor to your site in mind. Most of your site will be created with standard navigation links — top headings like “About Us”, “Product”, “Services” … and thematic links embedded in the content to create a mesh of links similar to that of the web. Remember that you are targeting a tree structure which will be broken down by theme. Your keywords will naturally appear in the appropriate sections / sub-pages if you break down your site in this way, which makes sense for both users and search engines. If you know of any other tips for designing your website structure for good SEO, please share them in the comments of the article. On the same subject :