All About Site Structure
Filed Under Blog Design, E-commerce Design
This First, lets start with the two types of site structure – physical and virtual. Both types are important for different reasons. Physical site structure is important to show search engines structure and organization; Virtual site structure is important for users to be able to navigate the site. Lets look at two examples.
Physical site structure: we have a homepage, or index – with 4 categories. Within each category are 3 pages. the directories and URL’s should look like a family tree:
http://www.mysite.com/
http://www.mysite.com/category1/
http://www.mysite.com/category1/page1.html
http://www.mysite.com/category1/page2.html
http://www.mysite.com/category1/page3.html
This is important so that search engines can not only better navigate your website, but can also put more ‘weight’ on certain pages. In this case, a search engine (SE) would see the index page as most important, then a category page, then the lowest level pages as least important. By placing all pages at the top level, or in the root directory, such as below – SE’s will assume all pages are equally important.
http://www.mysite.com/category1-page1.html
http://www.mysite.com/category1-page2.html
http://www.mysite.com/category1-page3.html
Virtual site structure: Regardless of physical site structure, google can also follow the links on a website. If a site’s navigation can show SE’s a structure, SE’s can better understand the importance of your pages, and better index your website. This can be done via a sites navigation, and/or by using breadcrumbs. To use navigation to show a virtual structure, A website can display the main categories, sub-categories, and pages within the subcateories within the main page or within the main navigation, as shown on Jcrew.com. In this particular instance, I’ve clicked “womens”, then “sweaters”. On this page, you can also see which subcategories fall within the category “sweaters”, which is within the category “womens”. Hopefully, you haven’t used javascript or ajax, and SE’s can properly follow your links.
Sample of “silo’ed” navigation:
Home
Category_one
Category_two
Category_three
-subcategory_three_a
- – page-one.html
- – page-two.html
-subcategory_three_b
-subcategory_three_c
- – page-one.html
- – page-two.html
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