9 Foolproof Ways to Plan Your Website Structure Diagram

A website contains a variety of topics and content provided on posts and pages. We collect, link, and organize topics for the visitors—the website template models how we do it. 

In plain words, website structure is how a website is set up. It contains how we link our homepage, pages, categories, and tags.

The paradigm website sitemap planning looks like a pyramid—the homepage at the top, the categories, then the subcategories beneath. Visualize how the additional pages diverge from the homepage into subtopics and folders.

Why You Should Design A Website Sitemap Structure

Without approvals for floor plans, no one would break ground on a new home. It’s because no one would like to knock together and recreate for the next few months. We could neither convince any team of contractors of the outcome as well. 

Floor plans manifest a home structure. And it’s like how a sitemap reveals a website’s design.

User Experience

What would be the main priority? It’s to focus on delivering a beneficial experience to the users.

The master plan for website construction will provide stress-free access to users. It would be easier to find the content they want to read.

For users, hassle-free navigation is likable. It’s also informative, so they spend more time on your site.

Thus, raising the dwell time and reducing the bounce time. Google will then notice that your website is an excellent display in the search query. It can boost your website rankings.

Improved Crawling and Improved Visibility in Google

What happens when you have a reliable website style structured as it should be? It would be trouble-free for Google bots to crawl your website.

One example is web pages linked. So, your actual content and pages are searchable and visible on Google.

It’s better to allow search engine crawlers to crawl your website. It provides a quicker ranking for your website. The internal links are tools to organize your website. Don’t forget the categories and tags.

It all goes to structuring sitemap principles well. The users can access their way to your website. What’s more, Google can index your URLs better.

Get Sitelinks When You Have a Good Site Structure

Sitelinks boost your website’s navigability. More so, with your users’ trust growing, it will help you lead SERPs. It reveals your site’s vital content and pages. 

Not only that, but it also grows your brand’s reputation. Plus, it develops user trust. It also reduces the conversion funnel and boosts your clickthrough rate.

Designing Your Site Helps In Setting Goals Or Expected Outcomes

How to structure your website layout should contain many objectives to achieve them. Operative and consistent approaches are part of the solutions. They are better than presenting products or services.

Marketing targets vary as determined by the nature of the business. An art site might want to display new masterpieces or sell them online. But, the main focus for a service-oriented business is to generate leads.

Is creating a simple structure and sitemap enough?

The simple answer is no. A simple website structure and sitemap aren’t enough.

With research, you know what potential clients are searching for. More so, you’ll have extra knowledge on competing with your competitors.

If there’s insufficient research, there won’t be a proper representation of the business. That’s what happens in a simple website structure and sitemap.

When you complete your research, you will recognize what content you need pages to build and how your website style will appear. It is preparation ahead for content marketing.

Imagine you have your list of pages, with the titles and descriptions, when crafting the pages. It’s stress-free work when you avoid beforehand duplicate titles and page descriptions. Consider evading missing page descriptions as well.

Create A Successful Website Structure: 9 Sure-Fire Tips

Planning a new website is an overwhelming process. It’s made more complicated by the size of the information. 

You should figure out the site structure before turning them over to the designers. That’s even when the designer engineers wireframe and simulate before launching. 

These foolproof ways are relevant to developing a website or an e-commerce store. They also work on an existing website that needs remodeling or a new one. Learn each guide and begin to plan your website architectural design.

1. Get To Know Your Business And Your Business Plan

Why do you need to know more about your business and its plans? Because knowledge of your business plan is the guide to some guaranteed measures.

You can also recognize your target market when you know your business plan. You will learn the best way to communicate with your target audience. You put yourself in their shoes to know which ones they would buy. 

2. Keyword Search And Site Mapping

What creates the website structure and content? They are the fundamental qualities of your SEO strategy. Any design of a website illustrates to Google the pages of the site that are most significant. 

Your website structure can have the authority on which articles will rank higher in the search engines. Yes, that’s why it’s a critical function that requires the action of the SEO strategy. That’s why you better get it right.

So, dive into the keyword search. You must start exploring research keywords and terms that can generate traffic. We all know traffic can grow the website’s revenue.

There are free tools that help you be aware of the process that you can try. Although, the paid apps provide more data and advantages. 

By using Keywords Everywhere, you will see volumes and competition. Installing it on your browser will reveal your competition. So, we search for the primary term online teaching.

You can see the cost per click on the search volume and the competition of the keywords you typed with this addon. 

You can check the related terms at the bottom of the Google search page. You can save the terms with search volume and competition in a document or sheen.

You can also view the related terms and the addon Keyword everywhere,e found on the right side of the search page. Save the associated terms as well by saving them to CSV. Then, you can add them to your Google sheet document later.

What’s more, it reveals what other ordinary people search for. But it’s always a long list. 

It’s important to note that you don’t need all these keywords. Some of them are not suitable for your website. 

These keywords are only the beginning of your research. Because you are searching for keywords and ideas fitting for your site now, you can also save them for future use.

Go through all the keywords you’ve saved, and you can get more ideas from related searches. Type each keyword one by one in Google and do the same for the new finds. 

Save them in one spreadsheet with their search volume and competition. Make sure you don’t go over a competition score of 0.20 if you have a new website or an existing one without great authority. You are only looking for keywords to provide preliminary traffic to boost your site performance.

Keyword research is helpful as it helps you decide the types of posts you should be arranging. Furthermore, the analysis will also reveal the manner of search intent behind them.

It’s crucial to note that you don’t craft a post for a search term that Google only ranks as products. In this case, you cannot get to the top. Remember, a good post’s content or how easy the competition is not guaranteed to be on top.

Don’t forget that spot-on keywords increase your site’s visibility for search engines. This run-through generates content to rank well in search engine optimization or SEO.

Your content strategies should be more innovative than search engines. Google Trends are also strategic for recognizing terms people use on search engines.

So, how do we use the keywords in our posts? When you want to rank your keywords and place them in the title tag, inserting them at the beginning of the post is better. Your keywords should also appear on your H1 tag, meta description, and post’s body content.

Don’t forget that it has to be well-written. Content that’s instructive or explanatory plus keyword-rich gets picked up by search engines. All these advantages help to make your website easier to find.

3. Analyze Your Competition

Give notice of your competitors. This is a crucial step to create an exemplary architecture for your site. The research is beneficial. It prevents and fixes errors. 

Study and check several competitors to design a thorough and immaculate structure for your website. The outcome is valuable as you create the most refined construction of your site.

4. ‍Design Your Website Hierarchy

Website hierarchy is easy, but it makes sense. It’s your method of structuring your information. Everything essential starts here. It develops into your navigation and your URL structure.

Make sure your hierarchy is sensible. Simplicity is better than overthinking and overcomplicating the process. Aside from you, it’s most beneficial for users and crawlers.

But, no matter how simple, each primary category must be exceptional and distinctive. Likewise, each subcategory should connect in some way to the main category. 

Don’t exceed having many main categories. Keep it between two to seven main categories. If you’ve created more than seven categories, you may want to reconsider the structure and cut back down.

At the same time, even out the number of subcategories within each category as well. Don’t compromise disparity. Do it with the other main categories when you have five subcategories under one main category.

5. Design an URL Structure That Goes Along The Navigation Hierarchy

Your URL structure is also crucial in creating a solid site structure. This task won’t be too challenging when you have a well-thought hierarchy. 

The URL structure follows and is in harmony with your site hierarchy. URLs should have actual words and proper keyword coverage.

6. Design A Primary But Logical Navigation

Your main navigation should be brief. Rather than use complete sentences, each element should have at least 1 to 5 words (‘About,’ ‘Contact Us’). 

Use the KISS principle (Keep It Simple Stupid) when naming navigation. Make some sense within and use a common language. 

Moreover, ensure the user can access the main pages with no trouble. They don’t need to read several pages to find the necessary information.

7. Aim For Navigation With CSS And HTML

Keep the coding simple as well when designing the navigation. JavaScript, AJAX, and Flash limit the crawler’s skill to hide your site’s navigation and hierarchy. So, HTML and CSS are the most secure and safest methods.

8. Establish A Complete Internal Linking Structure

According to Neil Patel, internal linking is like “putting meat on the bones.” The internal linking structure is essential. They grant users to navigate your website. 

Besides, the linking structure facilitates an established information hierarchy for the specified website. Also, links support ranking power around websites. There’s a relation between designing a solid site structure and other reasons linking structure is essential.

Every page on your website should have at least some links to and from another page. The navigation should complete internal linking to the main categories and subcategory pages. Still, make sure the leaf-level pages have internal linking as well. 

Your internal linking notifies the search engines of what pages are important and how to get there. So, it’s better to have more internal linking across all pages.

9. Design The Site Structure

The sitemap provides the web designers with a clear outline of the website’s information layout. The sitemap presents the groundwork for any well-designed website. It also describes the associations between pages and content features.

The website often turns out well without a sitemap. It’s often compared to building a house without a blueprint.

Also, it is an operational planning tool for both designers and non-designers. The sitemap can help categorize and explain the actual content on your website. Likewise, sitemaps remove pointless pages. 

Note this pointer: anyone can draft a sitemap, whatever design skills they have. It’s because it’s only an outline or flowchart of the essential content for your website.

How to Create a Site Map

Creating a sitemap involves the following:

1. Plan the main sections and pages of your website.
2. Outline the essential pages and their subpages.
3. Arrange the pages in a logical flow
4. Use a visual tool to create the site map.
5. Label the pages on the site map.
6. Review, revise, and refine the site map.
7. Share and collaborate with a team if needed.
8. Update the sitemap as the website evolves.
9. The site map serves as a blueprint for organizing and navigating the website effectively.

What is a website tree?