Websites have evolved quite a lot over the years in functionality and in overall structure. They can fulfill a need for you and your business to not only provide relevant information to your customers but in some cases your website is your business.
Here are some tips on how your website can be all that it can be!
Site Navigation
Your site navigation plays a tremendous role in its overall SEO authority. Steer clear of navigation structures that make it difficult for search engines to crawl, like Flash or JavaScript. Stick with XHTML and CSS (or if you must use images for the navigation, but sure to use ALT tags). Shallower websites are more in favor than websites that have great “depth,” which typically requires lengthy strings of clicks to see every page on your website.
Backlinks
Shallow navigation structures improve your website’s usability, making is easier on your visitors to find what they came for. Making your website more accessible improves your bounce rate and may improve overall average time on the site, which play a further role in SEO rankings.
Websites with depth can benefit from internal backlinking:
– External backlinks – links that point to your website from entirely seperate sites
– Internal backlinks – connections between individual pages within your website
Benefits of Internal backlinks between pages or blog posts:
– Decrease the number of clicks required to access each page of your website
– Internal links offer keyword-rich
– Internal links improve user experience on your website
When you add to new page or blog post, take a moment to think if the readers may be interested in other topics you have covered elsewhere on your website. If this opportunity arises, create internal links within your content that point to these other website pages.
URL Structure
The URL structure of your website plays a very important role on how your site is being “seen” by search engines.
Our URL structure looks something like this:
http://gliffen.com/mobile-website-design.php
– Search engines will look at something like this and because “mobile website design” is being separated by dashes, these keywords will be recognized as separate phrases and because target keywords are being used throughout, it should provide for relevant visitation.
When developing a WordPress site for example, we use the Permalink area to be sure that we use the “post name” option. This helps ensure your website qualifies for full consideration by the search engines.
Original article: SEO 101: How Your Website’s Structure Affects its SEO