Building Website Structure: Simple Tips for Better SEO and User Experience

Website structure is also known as website architecture. This term is used to define the hierarchy of a site. This architecture determines where every page belongs and how they all are linked with each other. It also determines how the information on your site is organized and presented to visitors and search engine algorithms too.

The architecture consists of multiple elements:

• Navigation;
• Design;
• Content of a website;
• Technical aspects.

The architecture is responsible for how well algorithms can read the context of your site. Also, it’s responsible for how freely visitors can navigate your pages and how appealing your site generally looks to them, which means it determines user experience. Thus, it’s a crucial element of search engine optimisation (SEO).

But how can you use it to your benefit? In this guide, we will tell you everything about building a website structure that looks great for users and search engines!

What Is an SEO-Friendly Website Structure?

First of all, it’s the organization and layout that were designed to be easily indexed and understood by search engines, ensuring high positioning for your pages in search engine result pages (SERPs) and high organic traffic.

Apart from matching the algorithms of search engines, an SEO-friendly organization should also contribute to a better user experience (UX). That is, it should make it easy for users to find the content they need, navigate through pages, etc.

All in all, three core parts make a perfect SEO site:

• Focus on search – Pages deliver high-quality, original, relevant, and valuable content optimized for search.
• Delightful UX – The site is easy to use and navigate; it has a delightful design and loads fast.
• Technical soundness – Architecture and content are optimized to be easy to find, crawl, and index by search engines.

There are many ways to improve your website’s SEO. If you check the Top10seosoftware.com website, you will discover a variety of reviews on the best software and tools that will help you improve all three core elements of your site. But now, we will focus on building a website structure that will boost your SEO.

Why Is an SEO-Friendly Website Structure Important?

From the definition, you should already see that architecture and its proper optimization play a big role in SEO, ranking, and, respectively, the success of your business.

Summing up, there are 3 core reasons why you should care about building an SEO-friendly website:

1. A well-optimized architecture enables search engine spiders to find and index all your pages correctly. Google uses a navigation structure and links between pages to understand your site.
2. Adding internal links to different website pages gives those pages more link authority. This can help improve their positioning in SERPs.
3. A logical and clear structure improves UX by letting visitors navigate through your site with ease and find everything they need.

How to Build an SEO-Friendly Website Structure

Now that you know more about the definition and importance of architecture, it’s time to move on to the most important part – building a website structure that’s perfectly optimized both for users and search engines.

Below are a few simple steps that will help you achieve this goal.

Use a Logical Directory Structure

A directory (aka hierarchy) is the most important element of the overall architecture. The goal of this element is to ensure that users will be able to get to any page without a hassle.

To do this right, you must divide your site into categories, subcategories, sub-subcategories, etc.

For example, let’s say you are on your homepage. From this point, you want visitors to learn about your products/services, features, and prices – so you create a separate category for each purpose and insert additional subcategories into each for more seamless navigation.

To connect pages, use navigation bars. They help visitors find the needed sections easily and not get lost. The navigation bars look like this:

Home > Services > SEO Audit > And so on

Create Clear and Concise Titles for Your Pages

To help visitors and engines understand the purpose of every page, there must be clear titles. For example, there is a category where you want to introduce your products or services – name it accordingly for everyone to see that they will find product/service information there. And keep your titles short for simpler crawling.

In addition to titles, make sure you designate relevant URLs to all pages. Typically, good architecture uses URLs that look like this:

https://website.com/category/subcategory/

Use Relevant Keywords Throughout Your Website

Of course, you want every landing page, section, or subsection of your site to rank high for a relevant keyword to gain the most organic traffic. This can bring you a higher ranking and more visits. That’s why you must use keywords when building a website structure.

Research and analyze the most popular queries for every section and insert them into your content. This way, you will make your pages look more relevant to specific users’ queries. This will also let you cover a larger number of keywords at once.

Create Internal Links Between Your Pages

Including internal links has several reasons. First of all, links are used to crawl your site. Thus, they are crucial to helping search engines understand your structure. 

Secondly, links help visitors get around your site more easily and find the information they are looking for quickly, such as information about how to work from home.

Lastly, including internal links can give you an additional SEO boost for important site sections.

Optimize Your Website for Mobile Devices

According to Statista, today, there are 7.33 billion mobile users globally. In 2025, it’s predicted to be 7.49 billion. The growing number of mobile users indicates the huge importance of optimizing online resources for mobile devices.

By doing this, you will make your site easy to navigate from any device. Besides, this will also affect your ranking due to Google’s mobile-first indexing.

Keep Your Website Up-to-Date

Updating your site regularly and ensuring that it only contains valid information is crucial for your business. By doing so, you will make your site look more trustworthy to visitors and search engines, too.

The Importance of Site Architecture for SEO

A website’s architecture, also known as its information architecture, refers to how the content on the site is structured and organised. An SEO-friendly site architecture can provide several benefits:

Easier crawling for search engine bots: Search engines use crawlers or spiders to index websites. A clear, logical structure with easy-to-crawl navigation makes it simpler for these bots to discover and index all of your site’s pages. This helps ensure your entire site can be indexed.

Clear information architecture helps search engines understand your content: A well-organized hierarchy and internal linking structure give context to search engines about your overall site and individual pages. This allows them to understand the topic of each page better.

Allows you to optimise different sections for different keywords: With a well-planned architecture, you can target different keywords and phrases on specific sections or categories of your site. This enables you to rank for a wide range of relevant search queries.

Elements of an SEO-Friendly Site Architecture

To build a website architecture optimized for search engines, focus on these key elements:

• Information architecture – Organize your content in a logical hierarchy that makes sense to users and search bots—group-related content.
• Internal linking structure – Search engines follow links between pages on your site. Use contextual internal links to highlight connections.
• URL structure – Create descriptive, keyword-rich URLs using hyphens instead of underscores. Keep them short but meaningful.
• Navigation design – Make it easy for users and search spiders to navigate through all sections of your site. Use text and menu links.
• Mobile optimization – With growing mobile usage, ensure your site is mobile-friendly and responsive across devices. Check page speed.

Optimizing Individual Pages for SEO

Beyond site-wide architecture, also optimize individual pages for the best SEO:

• Optimize page titles and meta descriptions – Include target keywords naturally and make them compelling to attract clicks.
• Include target keywords in titles, headers, and page content – Naturally repeat them so search engines understand relevancy.
• Make sure each page has a unique value proposition – Differentiate each page and make them worthwhile destinations.
• Include high-quality content that answers search queries – Provide value to users and search engines with engaging, useful content.

Linking Strategy for Improved Rankings

A strong internal linking strategy can enhance your rankings:

• Link relevant pages together for better crawlability – Cross-link-related content to help search bots discover more pages.
• Use anchor text with keywords for internal links – Choose descriptive anchor text instead of just saying “click here”.
• Get quality external links to improve domain authority – Earn backlinks from reputable external sites to boost rankings.
• Analyzing and Improving Your Site Architecture
• Regularly check your site’s architecture for SEO opportunities:
• Use site mapping tools to visualize your structure – See connections between pages and find issues.
• Check crawlability with site audits and bot crawlers – Identify accessibility problems for search engine spiders.
• Monitor keyword rankings for important pages – See which pages rank well and where there are gaps.
• Continuously refine structure and links for better SEO – Update site architecture over time for optimal performance.

Conclusion

An SEO-friendly website structure is an important part of any winning online marketing strategy. It creates positive UX, helps search engines crawl your pages, and can take you higher in SERPs.

Luckily, now you know how to implement this all in life. Follow the tips from this article to build a website that’s easy to crawl and index and that visitors will enjoy using.