Web Page Structure as part of the overall website structure

Individual web page structure can be optimised to maximise a pages SEO potential. Touching again on the issue of page content, the way you structure this content on the web page determines how relevant the page will be deemed by search engines as well as human visitors.

If you are coding with standards compliant HTML & CSS then the likelyhood is your website will follow the structure of having a header section that normally contains a main title to cover the web page and possibly a menu system for navigating your website. After this you will have the main content section split into any number of columns or sections. At the bottom of your page it is usual to find the footer which will contain generic site information and maybe further links or pointers for users to navigate away from the current web page.

“Web Site Structure - understanding your business and the website's goal allows a Professional web design company to accurately create the site structure that will aid end users and the search engines to ensure your business website is an effective and successful marketing tool”

If your business website is hard to navigate or forces the user to have to work to find the easy way to achieve what ever goal they visited your website to achieve, then you run the risk of losing them as a customer so think about your website structure carefully!

Web Page Structure mistakes

• No forward navigation from the current page causing the web visitor to press back to get anywhere - this is annoying to a human user but if a search engine spider hits this "dead end" then they will exit your site where as you could have had them crawl more pages
• No call to action for the specific web page - remember every page must have a purpose and lead the visitor towards your website goals. Leaving visitors with a clear idea of what is expected of them next is aiding in user experience which is always a good SEO tactic
• Content appearing before main title/page description due to poor coding. The equivalent of reading the newspaper article follow on page story before turning to the front page to read the start of the story - give human visitors and search engines your page information in logical and grammatical structured order
• Bear in mind the order your content appears in the code lines will be the order the search engine reads the page content where as using CSS styling this may not be the case for the human visitor - ensure both visitors get the content in the relevant order!

Page Titles within your site structure

How you decide to code and structure your web pages can have a positive or negative impact on your SERP results. Using unique and descriptive page titles across your business web site will again help provide search engine content to help you rank for your targeted keywords.

Ready made and CMS (Content Management Systems) usually do not use this degree of on site optimisation and will regularly have page titles such as index.html / page1.html / page2.html / page3.html etc and also confusing site structures as the design is generic and not bespoke to your individual business needs.

When structuring your web site ensure that you save each page as an appropriate page name as every little helps in getting the search engine success formula just right and the page title is an ideal opportunity to put your main page keyword or content subject in the web url.

Internal Link Architecture

The internal link architecture is a crucial part of the site structure. It is important enough to have it's own page which is available from this link

Learn all about internal link architecture for SEO success

To summarise internal link architecture it is the manner in which you structure the navigation through your web pages and website as a whole. It concerns which pages link to which others and can set the user on a path (or multiple paths) towards completing an overall goal (buying a product/contacting you direct/filling in a web form etc).