Web architecture is the discipline and the set of actions that serve to organize and structure the information contained in a web to be user-friendly and traceable.
The web architecture or information architecture is the way in which the elements within your page are located, and how they interact with each other. This will determine and set the tone for how users will be able to move around your site to access products or services.
The most important points to analyze to know if your page has a good web architecture are:
Among the elements that comprise the development of a good web architecture is:
As users, we love that the content we are looking for is found easily and quickly, for example by using indexes of content. In addition, to be useful, there has to be a good architectural scheme behind it that takes care of placing categories and subcategories, as well as the rest of the content types that the web has.
A well designed, structured and programmed website will result in a much better position in the main Internet search engines. Furthermore, it is important to identify the main Keywords to plan the web architecture and the structure of your pages.
During the elaboration of your web architecture, a SEO agency will make your page more competitive in the search engines and it will be positioned in the first positions in the Internet search engines.
Remember: a good architecture is one that improves the user experience.
A reader-friendly, coherent content that does not bombard them with meaningless keywords, certainly helps to improve the user experience, but not only that, what are you going to do with content that does not have a proper place to be laid out?
Although it may seem more of a programmer’s job than SEO, web architecture plays an important role in the user experience, the way we link internally, the way we distribute information, how accessible it is from other devices and the use of optimized hyperlinks that facilitate internal search.
Now, how do you know if you have an adequate web structure? And what is a web structure?
Probably you think of a hierarchy, something similar to headings, titles, subtitles and headings that are present in a common text. But in reality it is a little bit more chaotic than that, and more than an ordered hierarchy, it’s more like a web in all its splendor.
Looking at things from that perspective, could we say that your website has a defined structure? We will help you find out.
If you want your content to generate a positive impact on the organic visibility of your online business, you must have an efficient web architecture. If we are able to organize and structure the web in the correct way, we will achieve it:
Make Googlebot’s work easier
All search engines have bots that crawl websites and index them. Bots are the crawling spiders of search engines such as Google and their job is to go link by link going deeper and deeper into the web, finding new URLs, evaluating them, if they are suitable by indexing them and placing them in a certain ranking according to a given algorithm.
Correct web architecture will ease the Googlebot’s work, indicating where it should go, avoiding wasting time on unnecessary links, which allows us to spend our crawling budget on those URLs that interest us at a business level.
Facilitate indexing
The fact that the bot is able to quickly go through all the sections of the web that we are interested in it knowing, allows the web to be indexed in a faster way, improving its positioning, which will directly affect the fulfilment of its objectives (if it is not seen, it does not exist). A non-indexed URL will never bring organic traffic.
Facilitate crawling on your website
In order for your website to be tracked more easily, it must have the following points well designed and error-free:
The information architecture treats each of these factors with the care it deserves, ensuring the traceability of your website.
Improving user response
Does your website work? Let’s think about UX (User eXperience). Users, as you know, make the existence of web pages possible, they have shown that information that can be easily accessed attracts them, and in the same way designs that are simple and easy to understand. How much have you focused on modernizing design?
Satisfaction > Loyalty/recommendation
Improving the user’s experience, showing them a user-friendly and intuitive website, will directly influence the improvement of their response: we will suffer a lower bounce rate, the user will spend more time on our page, because it addresses their information needs.
In turn, a better user response will generate a greater loyalty, which will facilitate that this user becomes a prescriber of the web, recommending it to other potential users.
Increase in sales
The information architecture aims to improve the web positioning of your site, but in the end it will attract more customers to your website and improve the user experience and consequently it will have increased results.
Digital marketing has proven tools to position you so that your product, service or brand increases its visibility in profitable terms, positioning itself among the best in the market.
Have you asked yourself how you can design an efficient information architecture for your website? If you have been paying attention to other articles in our blog, you probably already know that the way a website is organized contributes substantially to its positioning in the search engines, and as we have already explained professional techniques such as card sorting oriented to SEO, where we explained the steps and the usual types of classification to organize the contents in order to achieve a good architecture for the user.
When you start planning the architecture of a website, two aspects must be taken into account: SEO and user experience, as there are many websites where architectures are developed based solely on SEO and end up being not very useful sites full of keywords in each component of the website, that is, they are not intuitive sites for the user to navigate comfortably and easily.
When we begin to develop the web architecture of a page we go through different phases that will determine the usability of the page, that is, the degree of effectiveness, efficiency and efficacy with which users will be able to achieve the objectives that are needed within the page, whether they are sales, reservations or that the content is shared.
Analysis
The web architecture project must start with a good analysis and planning. This is a stage where the objectives of the page have to be guided according to the needs of the audience. Ideally achieving a balance between what is offered and the potential demand
User test or feedback
A user test is performed to determine the usability of the page with more objective results. This test analyzes the behavior of a group of real users within the website. With this procedure, certain usage problems, errors and other inconveniences can be corrected.
Design
The design of a web page consists of several parts. In the first place, we have the information architecture, here we try to determine and use the most appropriate model for the site. At this point we work on the connections between the different pages of the website, the relationship between them and all the details regarding accessibility and navigation within them. On the other hand, there is also the design style, here we work on the details related to the interface and the appearance of each of the elements presented on the page. And, finally, there is the design of the content, which seeks to achieve a good planning of relevant and quality content that is related to each other and presents coherence within the structure of the page.
Prototype
Prototypes are those that allow the evaluation of a website prior to implementation. At this stage, prototypes are made of the web structure to be used; these are not usually completely equal in appearance, but they work to analyze the usability of the web page.
Implementation
When implementation is reached, quality control and monitoring of all aspects of the page must begin immediately. At this point, tools must be used to control and validate the usability of the website. Once the functionality of the page has been monitored and verified, it can finally be launched, making all the services available to the user
A SEO agency like a SEO Engineer is in charge of analyzing all the factors that can influence the natural positioning of your website; in this way, it can incorporate all the necessary improvements to carry out the optimization process.
An expert SEO consultant will give you the necessary advice to improve the architecture of your web and, in this way, make the best decision to improve your positioning.
At Ingeniero SEO we take care to advise you of the best options, from the point of view of search engines, to make an optimal web architecture.