What Is Website Architecture? and How to Build it for SEO

Website architecture refers to the blueprint planning covering how content across a website is organized, linked, and presented to customers. It includes conceptualizing the website structure and finding the best way for users to navigate through it.

A website must be planned out carefully to work well for both businesses and customers. This is similar to how buildings require blueprints and architectural plans to be constructed properly. The architecture of website design lays the foundation plan. By using this, businesses will have robust information plans and linkage strategies that help them in creating a website. In essence, when we ask, "What is website architecture?" we're essentially exploring the behind-the-scenes design that makes our online experiences seamless and user-friendly. This will fulfill the business goals while meeting their customer needs.

Website architecture is like building architecture, but for websites. It considers how users interact with a website and what the business wants to achieve. By planning the layout of pages to match user tasks and business goals, websites can be more effective.

The good architecture of website design consists of these 4 elements that need to work together seamlessly:

• Navigation System: The website’s menus, buttons, links, and tools allow access and movement across various sections. It includes primary navigation bars, footer links, sidebars, contextual links within content, etc.
• Page Layouts: The visual interface and strategic placement of features on web pages help to engage users and enable desired actions like emails, downloads, purchases, etc. This includes imagery, videos, call-to-action placement, etc.
• Interlinking Architecture: The connections provided between various pages and content assets through internal links, category links, next buttons, etc, to continue user journeys.
• Style Guide: The visual design components like color schemes, typography guidelines, icon system, image frameworks, etc. lend styling consistency across site pages and establish brand identity through the website experience.

So, a Website architecture design is about making it easy to find stuff on a website and moving around it. That means from a mobile phone to a laptop, people can more easily use the website. A site must be set up in a way that is free of clutter and puts the essential things first.

Mainly the focus of a website architecture strategy is to ease the process of finding information on a website to create seamless user flows. In simpler terms, the benefits of having a well-planned website architecture design include:

• Findability Of Information – An organized information hierarchy makes the content easily discoverable with connecting links facilitating movement across sections. Visitors will find their required information faster this way.
• Easy Navigation – Logical grouping and consistent labeling of architecture elements make website navigation effortless for visitors. They can travel between pages with fewer clicks.
• Brand Remembrance – Uniform styling and messaging due to planned style guides increase brand association and recall value, thus amplifying growth.
• SEO And Rankings – Simpler site mapping enables search engine bots to crawl pages faster, improving indexing and rankings. This grows organic visibility and low-funnel conversions over time.

Hence careful strategic planning is important for making the architecture work for users while aiding search visibility simultaneously.

In the world of websites, there are good architectures of website design that make things smooth and bad ones that make everything a mess. Let's explore the differences between Good and Bad Website Architecture to see why some websites work well and others, well, not so much.

• Good website architecture makes browsing intuitive. It allows users to seamlessly discover information without getting overwhelmed. The content finds ability is high, with minimal clicks leading to pages.
• Bad website architecture is non-intuitive. It makes it hard for people to use the website and impossible for search engines to understand the content. Both humans and bots get lost when information is poorly organized.

After getting to know the importance of this web design process, let's understand how to create a website architecture. For fresh websites, redesigns, or migrations, the process includes the following:

• Deep Customer Research: Understand visitor profiles, website expectations, and desired improvements through surveys and talks. Research provides planning direction, whereas patterns can be discovered through surveys and interviews.
• Competitor Evaluation: Learn how industry leaders have built website architecture around things like site flows, content structures, linkage tactics, and visual styles. Identify their strengths and flaws and then include them in your process.
• Business Objectives: Frame specific quantifiable website objectives like increasing site traffic by 30%, generating 50+ new leads every month, lowering bounce rates by 5%, etc. This steers overall architecture planning by revealing KPIs. For instance, blog pages aim for engagement, while product pages target sales. Aligning architecture with such goals improves performance.
• User Journey Mapping: Show typical complete customer journeys across awareness, consideration, and purchase steps. Find areas where people are having trouble moving around the site and make them better.
• Information Architecture: Categorize website information into logical buckets and sub-buckets. Plan how these content pieces will be tagged, interlinked, and made discoverable through architecture. Plan interlinkages for discoverability.
• Navigation Design: Create easy yet useful menus, footer links, and buttons framed by IA plans tying important pages. Simplicity and clarity enable navigation.
• Prototyping: Make website maps demonstrating page connections and wireframes showing visual interface and content sections through placeholders.
• Testing With Users: Run ease-of-use tests assessing page flows, navigation efficiency, and content finding with target user groups. Apply learnings to get better architecture iteratively.

As evident, making efficient website architecture design requires meticulous planning through research, maps, and guiding principles resulting in customer-focused designs.

The following section dives deeper into how to create a website architecture that also ranks higher on search engines, given its SEO-friendliness.

Since a bulk of website visitors today come through organic search, SEO and website architecture share an intricate relationship. Well-planned information flows, linking structures, and optimal presentation of page elements enhance the discoverability and crawlability of the website. These both are vital for earning high search rankings, which secure qualified traffic. You need to place equal importance on enhancing visitor experience as well as improving visibility to relevant user searches.

Here are tips to shape website architecture for SEO that lifts organic visibility:

To start how to create a website, begin by doing extensive keyword research using tools like Google Keyword Planner. This gives insights into

• Volume of monthly searches for relevant keywords
• Keyword difficulty scores indicating how competitive they are to rank for
• Related long-tail keyword variants

To attract more people to your products and services, it's important to narrow down your list of keywords to those that are most popular in online searches. This means choosing a focused list of priority terms that align with what you offer.

Next, structure your website's content and pages based on topics and subtopics covered in priority keywords. Organize website information into logical, thematically related topic groups called silos. Interlink pages within each silo for better topical relevance. Example - A lifestyle blog can have silos like Fashion, Beauty, Travel, Food etc. So, Start mapping out the site structure, like

• Main sections and categories based on topics and subtopics relevant to your brand
• Relationships between different types of pages
• Labeling all important pages like landing & exit pages

Essentially, build a site map reflecting important categories and pages along with their interlinkages. This creates a site hierarchy for better manageability. Use architecture diagrams to visualize page connections.

Identify the vital pages that offer maximum value to different visitors, such as:

• Homepage
• Category pages with the most relevant products/services
• Lead generation pages like Contact, Pricing
• Highest-traffic blog posts or guides

Strengthen on-page SEO for these pages through page optimization best practices around keywords, content, technical factors, and conversions.

Site navigation aids visitors in discovering information and accessing pages within the defined architecture seamlessly. Some best practices around optimizing navigation include:

• Descriptive Text Links: Use clear, descriptive labels for items in main menus, sidebars, and footers. For example, use a label like "Office Chairs" instead of just "Chairs".
• Breadcrumb Trails: Display page hierarchy through breadcrumbs so users know the current page's position and can quickly navigate upwards.
• Intuitive Internal Linking: Link relevant pages contextually within content to lead visitors to related information.
• Search Box: Include a site-wide search bar for easy discoverability of pages.

Now plan on-page optimization for priority pages, including elements like:

• Page Titles & Meta Data: Use highly relevant target keywords in page titles and meta descriptions. This ensures pages are indexed accurately.
• Content: Provide in-depth, useful information focused on page-level keywords so search engines understand page relevance.
• Media: Use images, videos, and illustrations to engage visitors and communicate page context visually.
• Page Speed: Faster loading pages get crawled and indexed quicker. So optimize technical aspects like code, image compression, and caching.

Assess technical optimization aspects like:

• Search and user-friendly URL structure
• Eliminating errors and broken links
• Leveraging 301 redirects appropriately
• Improving site speed for better crawling & user experience

Implement website analytics solutions like Google Analytics at the start to monitor performance.

Key metrics to track around SEO include:

• Organic traffic
• Keyword ranking positions
• Pages indexed
• Click-through-rates
• Bounce rates

Continuously evaluate metrics around search optimization and visitor engagement to refine information architecture.

To ensure a successful and profitable search engine optimization (SEO) strategy, it's important to lay a strong foundation by following web design trends during the website's development stages. This will help you execute high- ROI search strategies post-launch. By doing so, you'll be able to maintain a strong online presence and get the benefits of effective SEO tactics.

There are certain common pitfalls to avoid when planning website architecture for SEO-friendliness. Avoiding them can increase the satisfaction of users as well as increase traffic. Some of them are:

Overloaded Navigation

Too many navigation links crammed in menus raise a cognitive load. Streamline to the absolutely vital ones.

Inconsistent Page Layouts

Varied page layouts across site sections confuse visitors. Use standardized, predictable templates for cohesion.

Cluttered Pages

Avoid cramming pages with excess content assets like images, videos, ads, and widgets. Keep page objectives tightly focused.

Deep Information Hierarchy

Nested navigation that requires too many clicks frustrates visitors. Ideal depth is 3-4 clicks to reach any page from entry points.