Influence of site structure on its ranking
It is not in vain that from time to time we boast in our portfolio that the dog was eaten during the structuring of the catalog. A clear hierarchy, easy navigation and familiar section names to the liking of not only visitors, but also search engines. How do robots determine the quality of the site structure? What should be the reference directory and the main elements of the resource in terms of SEO? You will learn about these and other tricks very soon.
Why is quality structure important for a website?
Firstly , the search engines themselves talk about this in their recommendations to webmasters. Yandex focuses on:
- understandable (traditional) names of menu sections;
- dividing general categories into more specific subcategories.
Google also recommends using concise, descriptive titles for directory sections.
What does it mean? Try to make the site as comfortable and understandable for the user as possible, especially if its subject matter is specific and difficult to understand.
Secondly , users will quickly find the information they are interested in, improving behavioral factors - one of the important criteria for ranking sites.
Thirdly , a convenient catalog and a clear website architecture will help increase sales - it is much more pleasant to make purchases in a comfortable, cozy environment, regardless of whether it is online or offline.
Fourthly , search engines index faster and rank sites with a competent, clear structure much better.
Robots do not operate with the concepts of “understandable”, “convenient”, “correct”, they evaluate the structure of the site according to the input queries. A high-frequency query is the title of a section, a mid-frequency query is a subsection, and a low-frequency query is the last element of the structure (product page).
The site will quickly and easily get to the top for the high-frequency query "chairs" if it can answer all the visitor's questions. In other words, it will contain in the subcategories of the catalog the maximum number of types of chairs: “wooden…”, “… for office”, “… for kitchen”, etc. The more subsections, the more users will be able to solve their problem on this site.
The structure of the site should also be visible to search engines, for this you need:
- logically structured sections and subsections in the main menu;
- short and distinct names of categories and subcategories;
- title contains the title of the h1 page page, which in turn matches the anchor of the link to this page from the main menu;
- intuitive URLs with a logical structure (http:// glavnaya.com/kategoriya/podkategoriya/tovar);
- Breadcrumbs should be displayed according to sections.
Features of the structure of the ideal site
Based on user experience research, several relevant features of a well-structured resource can be identified.
- Visitors spend 69% of their time browsing the left side of the site, so important components are most often placed here - the sidebar, information about promotions and discounts.
- Navigation buttons are best placed at the top of the page (preferred) or on the left.
- Large images immediately attract visitors. Getting to the site for the first time, they first look at the main image, and then slide their eyes below, getting acquainted with the content.
- 80% of users spend more time on information at the top of the page or on the so-called “first screen”. It is better to place the logo and contact information at the top, without cluttering this space with banners and other elements that can distract the user.
The content on the page must be placed in accordance with the F / E-scheme of the user's gaze on the site:
- F-Chart – Users typically scan the page less and less as their eyes move down towards the footer.
- The E-chart appears when viewing horizontally, moving lower and lower.
At the same time, visitors most often practically do not pay attention to the right side of the site.
- The first two paragraphs should contain the most important information, since only the strongest will be able to continue reading further, and then only if the content is interesting. For the same reason, you should avoid voluminous texts without structuring with headings, subheadings and bulleted lists on landing pages.
Effective design aims to create a simple, clear and comfortable navigation, to quickly interact with users, and to increase the return rate of visitors. A competent structure is undoubtedly highly valued by search engines, but it cannot guarantee a site a place in the top, in order to stay at the top, high-quality optimization and promotion of the resource is necessary.