SEO Website Design: Improve Site Structure

Did you know only one-third of websites pass Core Web Vitals and fewer than six percent of pages will rank in the top 10 results within a year of publication? 

If you want to beat these statistics, you need SEO website design.

Any website can be optimized for Google, but designing it with SEO in mind from the start leads to better structure and faster rankings.

In this article, I’ll show you the steps I’d take if I were building a new website to rank in Google. You’ll learn to structure your site correctly, incorporate key SEO components like schema markup, and optimize your site’s content for relevant keywords. 

Key Takeaways

• SEO web design builds websites in line with search engine optimization best practices.
• Web design impacts SEO by improving crawlability, user experience, page speed, and preventing keyword cannibalization.
• There are four types of website structure: hierarchical, sequential, database, and matrix. The best structure depends on the kind of site you build.
• Use competitor, user, and keyword research when planning your site structure. Decide on an SEO-friendly URL structure before publishing content. 
• You can use plenty of strategies to ensure your site is SEO-friendly during development. These include optimizing meta data, optimizing images, adding Schema markup, paying attention to Core Web Vitals, and adding internal links. 

Table of Contents

• Key Takeaways
• What is An SEO-Friendly Website Design?
• Why Is Your Website Design Important For SEO?
• The 4 Types of Website Structure
  • 1. Hierarchical
  • 2. Sequential
  • 3. Database
  • 4. Matrix
• How to Pick Which Type of Website Structure Is Right for Your Website
• Tips for Designing An SEO-Friendly Website
  • 1. Structure Your Site To Be Easily Indexed
  • 2. Use Internal Links Effectively
  • 3. Optimize Your Meta Data
  • 4. Use A Website Architecture With Minimal Navigation Depth
  • 5. Optimize Images
  • 6. Keep up on Keyword Research
  • 7. Include Schema Markup
  • 8. Make Sure You Build A Responsive, Mobile-Friendly Design
  • 9. Keep Core Web Vitals In Mind
• How to Plan a Website Structure For SEO
  • Step #1 – Perform Market Research
  • Step #2 – Develop and Analyze Your Target Audience
  • Step #3 – Choose Your Website Structure and Hierarchy
  • Step #4 – Choose a URL Structure
  • Step #5 – Develop an Internal Linking Strategy
  • Step #6 – Create a Sitemap File
  • Step #7 – Track Your Site’s Performance
• FAQs
• Conclusion

What is An SEO-Friendly Website Design?

Website design for SEO is building a website in line with search engine optimization best practices. Web developers incorporate search-friendly elements like the following: 

• An indexable site structure
• A mobile-responsive design 
• Fast loading pages
• Schema markup (a form of structured data that helps search engines understand sites)
• Minimal navigational depth
• Lots of internal links

Including these elements from the start helps your site rank faster and stay SEO-friendly as it grows. It’s much easier to stick to an SEO-friendly structure once it’s in place than to create one when a website is several years old and has hundreds of pages of content. 

Why Is Your Website Design Important For SEO?

A beautiful website is useless if it doesn’t rank on Google. But that happens when we don’t build websites with SEO in mind. 

When you incorporate SEO best practices during website development, you get the following benefits:

• More search traffic. Search engines find it easy to crawl and understand well-structured, highly optimized websites, indexing your site faster and ranking it higher.
• Better user experience (UX). SEO-friendly websites have a clear structure, fast-loading pages, and a mobile-friendly design. These elements make it easy for users to navigate the site. 
• Less chance of keyword cannibalization. Keyword cannibalization happens when you optimize multiple pages for the same keyword. This is much less likely to occur on sites with a clear, logical site structure that gives every topic a place. 
• Reduces the need for constant on-page SEO adjustments. Developing a website with SEO in mind optimizes your site’s on-page and technical SEO. That means you can spend more time on link building and other off-page SEO strategies. 

Apply these strategies now to boost your site’s SEO.

The 4 Types of Website Structure

There are four types of website structures that fall into two categories: top-down and bottom-up.

With a top-down website, you design the entire structure in detail from the outset. This requires careful consideration of how your site will expand in the future. 

Bottom-up websites are more organic. They don’t adhere to a set structure and can evolve. 

Each category has advantages and disadvantages. For example, top-down websites have a logical structure that makes it easier for users and search engines to navigate the pages. But you must plan all the site’s content at the start. Once established, changing the overall flow and website setup is impossible.

Bottom-up websites are more flexible and allow marketers to make changes over time. However, they can be harder for search engines and users to navigate. 

Below is a breakdown of the four main types of website structures used today, along with use cases for when each one is more appropriate.

1. Hierarchical

A hierarchical, or tree structure, is the most popular website structure. It involves dividing larger, more general category pages into smaller, individual pages.

An example is e-commerce websites with high-level product categories (e.g., tops) that flow into smaller categories (like t-shirts, blouses, knits) that flow into individual product pages.

Here’s a great example from Nordstrom:

Notice how broad topics like clothing, dresses, and shoes form high-level pages. The site then breaks down these broad categories into more specific product types, such as loungewear, formal dresses, and heels. 

Create a hierarchical structure by outlining your most general, broad pages — the ones that will probably receive the most traffic. Then, split those categories into more specific, niche topics. You’ll probably optimize these pages for long-tail keywords.  

2. Sequential

A sequential or linear website structure follows a simple page-to-page path. It is more common in simple websites or when creating a campaign with multiple landing pages.

Sequential structures work well for checkouts and onboarding flows. EasyWebinar has a simple three-step sequential site structure guiding users through the account creation process:

Employ this structure in any area of your site where a logical, prescribed flow will improve the user experience. For example, you could use it in your checkout process or a sequence highlighting your product’s benefits.

3. Database

A database website is one of the most complex bottom-up structures, relying on search and internal linking for navigation. It is a great choice for websites with a vast amount of data where a pre-defined path could limit the user experience—think huge e-commerce stores, online forums, and social networks. 

Vrbo is an excellent example of a database website. The site is an enormous database of rental properties that users can browse using the search bar or a range of categories.

The bottom-up nature of database sites means you can build them over time. You don’t need to worry about perfecting it immediately. As your website grows, your previous database files will become part of their own dataset under the new, larger structure.

One challenge with a database structure is you will need someone on your team with extensive programming knowledge.

4. Matrix

A matrix structure connects many pages without the pre-defined structure or journey typical in hierarchical and sequential sites. 

Wikipedia is a prime example of a matrix structure. Notice there’s no traditional navigation menu—just a search bar.

There are endless possibilities for the next steps a user can take. With more than 80 percent of their traffic coming from organic searches, it works.

A matrix structure lets you present a large amount of data and information in a versatile format. You don’t need to worry as much about parent-child relationships for navigation. As long as you connect pages with lots of internal links, users can navigate freely.

How to Pick Which Type of Website Structure Is Right for Your Website

Your site structure will depend on the type of site you build. While you can choose any structure you like, it is best to choose one that aligns with your core ideas and how visitors expect to interact with your site.

A hierarchical or database structure will be best for websites with a lot of data and where clear categories exist.

A sequential structure will be better if you want to deliver bite-sized chunks of data in chronological order.

The matrix structure makes sense for sites with a lot of content or links that connect together—like Wikipedia. 

Tips for Designing An SEO-Friendly Website

Website design for SEO works best when you implement best practices from the outset. Use these tips during development to boost your rankings.

1. Structure Your Site To Be Easily Indexed

Start the SEO web design process by choosing a suitable site structure. In the vast majority of cases, a hierarchical site structure will be best. 

Hierarchical sites organize your pages into categories and subcategories that are easy for search engines and users to navigate. 

Improve your site’s structure further by: 

• Adding tags or descriptive labels to pages
• Grouping similar content using topical hubs
• Adding pagination and breadcrumbs
• Adding a header and footer menu

2. Use Internal Links Effectively

Internal links are links between your website’s pages. They are essential for SEO because they:

• Increase crawlability. Search bots follow internal links to discover new pages on your site. They also encourage humans to access more pages. 
• Pass link equity. Internal links share link juice between pages with lots of backlinks and other pages. 
• Describe pages. Each internal link’s anchor text (the clickable words in a link) tells users and search engines what the page is about. Hint: these should be keywords.  

An easy way to add more internal links to your website is to make your navigation menu as big as possible. Include every category and sub-category page, just like Target does: 

3. Optimize Your Meta Data

Meta data are HTML snippets web developers use to describe each page’s content. The most common are the page’s title tag and meta description tag. 

Google uses both to understand your website and may include them in your SERP listing.

Include a relevant keyword in the title tag and meta description to describe your site. Encourage people to click by making both tags as enticing as possible.

Tristan Ackley, UX Manager at NP Digital, says optimizing your meta data can help you comply with accessibility guidelines and ADA standards.

For example, he explains, nine of the 100+ accessibility guidelines focus on correctly implementing heading tags, which are SEOs’ bread and butter. Another 13 criteria are reserved for text links, which SEOs tag with keyword-rich anchors so that search engines can index them when crawling the site.

4. Use A Website Architecture With Minimal Navigation Depth

You don’t want any important pages to be more than two or three clicks from the homepage. This can be challenging for large sites, so having a clear site structure from the outset is so important. 

In particular, design your website with minimal navigation depth. This means that as many pages as possible should be accessible from the navigation. 

Sephora does a great job of making every major category and sub-category accessible within a single click from its massive navigation bar:

While there’s no hard-and-fast rule on the exact number of clicks, try to keep the navigation depth to four clicks or less.

5. Optimize Images

Images are an important part of web design, but you must do several things to make them SEO-friendly. This includes:

• Using descriptive file names. Google can read your image file names. Help them understand each image’s content by giving them descriptive names. 
• Adding alt text. Alt text tells search engines and visually impaired people what your images are. Make these descriptive and include keywords where possible. 
• Compressing the size. Large images will increase page load times. Make them smaller using image compression tools like TinyPNG.

Ensure you’re using a suitable file format like JPG or PNG. 

6. Keep up on Keyword Research

You can have the best site structure in the world, but you won’t get traffic if you fail to create content about topics people are searching for. 

Keyword research — the process of the phrases your target audience searches for — should begin during website development. That way, you can optimize your homepage, top-level category pages, and all other pages you plan to create for high-traffic, low-competition terms. 

Use a keyword tool like Ubersuggest to choose the right terms. It offers extensive keyword data, and insights to improve traffic and backlink opportunities. 

For example, suppose I’m developing a website for an outdoor brand. In that case, I might type in “hiking” to Ubersuggest to generate a list of relevant keywords and split them into different buckets:

Taking the Suggestions category, I can quickly identify several top-level categories like “hiking boots” and “hiking backpacks”. 

I can also find keywords for sub-categories like “hiking boots for men” and “hiking boots for women”.

If Ubersuggest serves up loads of great keywords, choose ones that have high search volume and low search difficulty (SD). 

7. Include Schema Markup

Structured data, like schema markup, makes it easier for Google to crawl and understand your site.

There are several types of schema markup. Find a full list here, but they include:

• Article schema
• Product schema
• Local business schema
• Event schema
• Review schema

Google can even add schema data directly onto web pages. These are called rich results and look like REI’s SERP listing below:

Adding structured data to your site is easy, thanks to Google’s Structured Data Markup Helper. Alternatively, you can use the Schema & Structured Data for WP & AMP WordPress plugin. 

8. Make Sure You Build A Responsive, Mobile-Friendly Design

Almost two-thirds of web traffic comes from mobile devices, and 92.3 percent of users access the internet using a smartphone.

Creating a mobile-friendly site isn’t just about serving up a great experience for these users, though. 

It also increases your SEO because Google uses mobile-first indexing. Google ranks sites’ mobile versions before the desktop version. So, if you don’t have a mobile-friendly site, Google may punish you in the SERPs. 

Make sure your site is mobile-friendly by:

• Using a mobile-responsive design that changes based on a user’s device
• Compressing images to improve site speed
• Avoiding popups to improve the user experience
• Changing text size and button placement to make your site easier to navigate 
• Adding more white space to declutter your site

9. Keep Core Web Vitals In Mind

Your site’s performance matters. Almost 70 percent of users say page speed impacts their willingness to buy. 

Core Web Vitals are a set of Google performance metrics that measure your site’s user experience, including its speed. These metrics are also ranking factors, so it is important to pay attention to them when developing a site. 

Core web vitals consist of three different metrics:

• Largest Contentful Paint (LCP) measures loading performance, or how long it takes the page to completely render.
• Interaction to Next Paint (INP) measures the site’s responsiveness when a user interacts with it by clicking a button or filling out a field. 
• Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS) measures visual stability, i.e., if the layout shifts while a user is on the page. 

Google makes optimizing these metrics easy thanks to PageSpeed Insights. Use this tool to learn your scores and what you can do to improve them.

At the time of writing, my site has an issue with INP:

Luckily, Google tells me exactly how to improve it:

Make sure you check your site’s Core Web Vitals before going live. Have a developer implement Google’s recommendations if you fail the test.

How to Plan a Website Structure For SEO

Ready to plan out your new SEO-friendly website structure? Guarantee your success by following my seven-step plan below.

Step #1 – Perform Market Research

Start the process by looking to your SEO competitors for inspiration. There’s no need to reinvent the wheel here. Your SERP competitors have done the hard work for you to find the best site structure. 

If everyone structures their site in the same way, you can bet your bottom dollar both Google and users expect all websites in your niche to do the same. 

Google your main keywords. Study the top 10 sites to see how they’re structured. Keep a tally of each structure so you know which is most common. 

Step #2 – Develop and Analyze Your Target Audience

The expectations of your target audience are even more important than your competition. Know who your audience is, what sites they visit, and what they expect from the user experience before deciding on your site structure. 

Why?

Because if users don’t like your site’s structure, then they’ll bounce. Bounce rate and other metrics like low dwell time could be a ranking factor, meaning a poor user experience may lead to lower rankings.  

So, don’t rush this step of the planning process. This is the greatest opportunity to learn how your visitors navigate competitor sites. 

Hold focus groups with your consumers to learn what they think about competitor websites and how they would improve each site’s layout.  

Once you have identified your website’s strengths and weaknesses, you can improve the user experience.

Step #3 – Choose Your Website Structure and Hierarchy

Use your research from steps one and two to choose an appropriate site structure. Will you choose:

• A hierarchical structure? This is a great choice for e-commerce websites. 
• A sequential structure? This is a great choice for landing pages.
• A database structure? This is a great choice for online marketplaces.
• A matrix structure? This is a great choice for sites with thousands of pages of loosely related content. 

If you’re unsure which structure makes sense, bring in an experienced UX/UI designer. They can provide valuable insights to your internal developers even if they aren’t involved in the entire project.

Step #4 – Choose a URL Structure

An SEO-friendly URL structure keyword-rich and easy to understand. It should clearly describe the page’s content. 

For example, the URL for my guide to the best WordPress SEO plugins is:

Clear and obvious, right?

Make sure your URLs mirror your website structure, too.  

For a hierarchical site structure with high-level category pages, low-level category pages, and product pages, a simple and effective URL structure would look like:

www.example.com/top-category/bottom-category/product-page

This URL structure offers a logical path for users to follow. It’s very similar to the breadcrumb navigation that many hierarchical websites use.

What about the URL structure for a matrix-style website structure? 

Creating a logical URL structure like the one shown above would be impossible with so many internal links. In these cases, a workaround would be using a simple direct link to the page topic. Here’s an example of how Wikipedia does it:

Step #5 – Develop an Internal Linking Strategy

Internal links make navigating your site easier for humans and search engines. They increase indexability and pass link juice from one page to another. 

Develop an internal linking strategy from the outset to easily and quickly create internal links whenever you add a new page to your site. 

Here are some guidelines you can use:

• Add at least one internal link to every page
• Use descriptive, keyword-rich anchor text
• Create topic clusters and link between relevant content
• Use a tool like Link Whisper to find internal link opportunities quickly

Remember, internal links don’t have to be text-based. You can use your navigation bar and buttons to create internal links, too. 

Step #6 – Create a Sitemap File

You need a sitemap if you want search engines to crawl your website quickly and efficiently.

A sitemap file is a map search engines can use to navigate your website. It tells crawl bots which pages are important and how they are connected, increasing indexability by making your site easier to crawl. 

Creating your sitemap is quick—it usually takes less than 20 minutes. You can do it using:

• Screaming Frog
• Yoast
• An online sitemap generator 

Here’s what my sitemap looks like. I used the Yoast SEO plugin to create it: 

Don’t forget to submit your sitemap to Google (via Search Console) and Bing (via Bing Webmaster Tools). 

Step #7 – Track Your Site’s Performance

Your job isn’t finished once the website is live. It’s just beginning. Track your site’s performance and keep it SEO-friendly by monitoring SEO metrics.

I recommend tracking the following KPIs:

• Organic traffic using Google Analytics. This will monitor your site’s rankings. 
• Indexed pages using Google Search Console. This will monitor your site’s crawlability.
• Core Web Vitals using PageSpeed Insights. This will monitor the user experience.
• Page speed using Pingdom. This will monitor load times.

You can also use Ubersuggest’s Rank Tracking tool to track rankings for specific keywords:

A change in rankings doesn’t necessarily mean your site’s become less SEO friendly. But if it coincides with a drop in performance or pages indexed, you will want to investigate. 

FAQs

What is a linear website structure?

A linear website structure displays content in sequential order from one page to the next. Checkouts and onboarding processes are the best examples of this site structure.

Which is the best type of website structure for SEO?

When it comes to SEO, the best website structure is hierarchical. This is a logical structure that is easy for search engine bots to crawl.

How are website design and SEO related?

Website design has a major impact on SEO. Even with great content, a site that isn’t mobile-friendly, has a poor structure, and is slow to load will not rank well. 

All things being equal, Google will rank a well-designed site higher. A site with a clear hierarchy, optimized pages, and lots of internal links is easy to crawl. Users will love it, too.

How do you build an SEO-friendly website?

Make your site as SEO-friendly as possible by developing it from scratch with SEO best practices. That includes:

• Creating an indexable site structure
• Optimizing images
• Adding internal links
• Using structured data
• Making it mobile-friendly
• Ensuring it loads quickly

Does changing website design affect SEO?

Yes, changing your website design can positively and negatively impact rankings. For example, making your site mobile-friendly or minimizing its navigational depth can increase rankings. 

However, removing high-performing content or adding loads of unoptimized images could hurt your rankings.

Conclusion

An SEO-friendly website design helps your site rank higher and deliver a better user experience. You can make an existing website SEO-friendly, but it’s much more powerful to implement SEO website design from the outset. 

So, plan your SEO site structure carefully, perform keyword research, and then follow my advice above to design the most SEO-friendly site possible. 

But the work doesn’t stop once you go live. Work hard to keep your site SEO-friendly by optimizing new content, adding alt text to every image, and keeping your site fast.