A High-quality, smooth user experience can only be achieved with a “sturdy foundation”. And a sturdy software foundation is a thoroughly structured one. Every brick must lay in its place and nothing must undermine the whole construction. More than that, the basic architecture of a website affects its SEO rankings in a major way. That is, most negatively when the structure is underdeveloped and/or under-optimized. However, you can boost your Drupal SEO ranking success dramatically if you properly establish and optimize the architecture at hand.
Know your website structure
There are many big and small things that may affect how Drupal website looks, works, and feels - from fonts and colors to buttons and other functional bits and elements. Your website architecture structure is also the way all content is organized on the site and the hierarchy of web pages the site has.
Why is it so Important?
Every company or entrepreneur that has worked with a good share of real-world clients through their own site for some years knows how much all structural details matter. What everybody’s still missing, though, is how much the whole website structure affects the overall SEO results of a certain resource. More so - how to achieve a structure that improves SEO with Drupal.
This is where the importance of working through the website structure arises, and we can name several other significant reasons to keep it all as SEO-friendly as possible on the foundation level.
Well-structured site = consistent UX
The underlying structure of the website defines how it feels, i.e., sets the accessibility, attractiveness, and overall level of user experience. All because people really crave to see all the small pieces in all the right places without even noticing it.
This is just the way the human brain works and you are doing a really good job with your website and content structure if you are able to satisfy that cognitive equilibrium - an ability of a person to piece all bits and details together in a logical manner (e.g., hitting a button on the screen and getting the exact expected result out of it.
This is why a well-organized, logical site structure results in better satisfied users. And this translates to search engine mechanisms. For instance, the major aspects that make Google algorithms favor your site include the overall CTR (click-through rate) and dwelling time (the amount of time averagely spent on your site by a user). This is why it is in your best interests to make sure your site is inviting and “comfy” enough for users to stay on it longer, get more engaged with it, and help search engines make out how much your particular resource deserves proper SERP.
You get to gain the much sought-after sitelinks
SERPs use sitelinks to list main pages of websites in search results. Your main page as well as a bunch of internal links it has are displayed in the search. Which is an essential SEO-boosting thing. In particular, they help users navigate your site better, easily finding the required actions and information, which in turn most positively affects the CTR, accelerates user conversion rates, boosts the level of customer trust, and reinforces your brand reputation.
Sitelinks are more than great to have, but you cannot simply create them in the Google Search Console or request them in any way. All you can do is work on your site structure, and if you do a good enough job - your Drupal site gains a sitelink automatically just for being awesome.
Vice versa, a poorly structured website isn’t likely to get one. Treat sitelinks as a sort of reward for working on every other detail of your web resource. And there’s no use missing out on these much-sought-after boosters of click-through, targeted traffic, and conversion rates.
Well-structured sites are better for crawlers
Google, for instance, uses Googlebots - specialized website crawlers that crawl through your site’s structure and index content in order to display it in search results. Thorough site structure makes their job easier and helps better index your site’s content for Google search.
The thing is that crawlers aren’t really impeccable indexing algorithms - it is no secret that they may fail to find and discover certain pages or URLs. And it is in your interest to help them crawl through your site most thoroughly. Sitelinks help a lot here. But, overall, you need to put a strong focus on the strong structure of the website in general.
If You Want Good SEO - Prepare for Good Work on the Site Structure
All in all, the major success of your SEO relies heavily on how your website is organized, structured, and elaborated. With a poorly set up site at hand, all the black box methods won’t do you much good. In turn, with a thorough approach put at the core of the site, you get a sturdy SEO reinforcement.
This is why it is important to watch how you organize all the ins and outs of a web resource.
Getting into more details, however, here are some major things that can help you keep everything consistent and achieve great SEO by optimizing architecture of Drupal website.
How to set up SEO-friendly website architecture?
Pro tip #1 - using a sitemap
The sitemap is basically a list of all URL links on your website that users can check with in order to easily find their way around the whole site. Search robots also “appreciate” the presence of the sitemap, recognizing your site as a truly consistent, reputable resource. A few important things should be mentioned here - make sure your sitemap is free from 404 errors, put the most highly performing pages as the top priority in the hierarchy of pages, and submit your created XML sitemap to Google for higher rankings right off the bat.
Pro tip #2 - user-friendly is a must
Above all, your website must be able to satisfy demanding users in the most efficient way possible. In order to make it really user-friendly, you have to make sure every essential aspect is well-optimized. This includes the speed of loading pages (and overall website performance), sturdy cybersecurity granted by efficient firewalls and malware, and mobile-friendliness as the necessary aspect in the age of the overwhelming use of mobile devices.
Pro tip #3 - optimize your URLs for SEO
A good URL makes up a significant share of your overall website structure’s success. So it’s crucial that you watch your URLs. In particular, make them simple and comprehensive - this is what Google search bots like and pay attention to. Join words with hyphens and reinforce URLs with strong, relevant keywords. And remember to only use lowercase in URLs and keep them short - 128 characters at the most.
Here’s an example of a concise, efficient URL that doesn’t confuse anyone and does its job perfectly:
sitename/categories/handmade-product-for-home
Pro tip #4 - work on navigation
The way users get to navigate your website must be absolutely hassle-free, intuitive, logical, and easy-to-grasp for everybody. As a result of accessible navigation, you get:
- A significant SEO boost;
- A conversion rates boost due to helping users easily find and buy exactly what they need;
- A felt customer satisfaction rates boost;
- Reduced bounce rates;
- More options displayed clearly for users;
- Convenient website mapping;
- Overall better SEO results.
Excellent navigation takes your website a long way, making it more inviting and attractive to all sorts of users.
Pro tip #5 - get your internal linking in place
To ultimately enhance navigation, you need to work on the site content hierarchy. Proper internal linking is a huge part of the whole process. The whole idea is to make sure all of your website pages are linked up neatly. I.e., every page has a proper link to it, which is also attached to the previous page. It’s best to have all pages interlinked in order to achieve the most thorough and accessible navigation.
How Does a Properly SEO-Optimized Site Structure Look?
Think pyramid. A logically-structured pyramid of pages that are all interlinked and have an underlying hierarchy that should look like this:
Homepage
Sections/categories
Subcategories/sections
Individual pages/content pieces
Structure Matters
These are the top 5 pro tips to give you a good headstart at your Drupal SEO optimization efforts. You may as well not bother tweaking things up if you do everything the right way from the very beginning of laying the foundation for your website. For now - stay in tune for more expert info.
And if you are looking to professionally optimize your Druapl site structure and achieve impeccable SEO results in the shortest terms - contact our specialists for in-depth SEO boosting we do by tackling all the underlying software architecture specifics.