5 Guidelines for Developing a Solid Website Structure

Shinseungback Kimyonghun, a video maker, has created a 9-minute video called “Click” on Vimeo. The video shows the relationship of a click with our daily lives in front of the computer screen. Now that more and more aspects of our lives are getting translated online, websites are becoming our link with the rest of the world.

The mammoth of web pages now available worldwide means that each user has fewer seconds for your website. How do you build a website that is searchable, engaging and lead generating? It is a lengthy process but here are a few guidelines to help you get started on a good website structure.

1) Too Many Pages Spoil the Broth

If yours is not an e-commerce website, or offers few services, it should typically have 15-20 pages. This number excludes your content marketing pages.

Here’s a starting paradigm for your website:

Take-away: Provide concise and complete information and avoid duplication.

Benefits

• Focus on quality.
• For every link built, Google passes page rank to all your website’s pages. If they are lesser in number, they will get more value and higher authority.

2) Careful with Keywords!

Creating a separate page for every keyword has already lost value and will continue to do so. If you are still following the old-school techniques and ‘luckily’ have not been hit by Google’s Panda or Penguin algorithms, trust me, this will be the last year for your website to survive on Google.

Take-away: Focus on Conversation Rate Optimization (CRO) to convert as many customers as possible.

Benefits

• Focus on user interface and user experience to generate leads or convert sales.
• A hub page allows you to appear on long-tail searches and target a number of keywords at a time.

3) Last Updated in 2000?

Google likes those websites which update regularly with unique, high-quality content. Blogging is one of the best marketing tactics used by all big organizations to keep their website content current and trending.

Take-away Write blog posts on trending topics relevant to your industry.

Benefits

• Increased genuine traffic
• Engagement with potential customers
• Backlinks from cited sources

4) Test Your Website

Broken links are a no-no. So are dysfunctional contact forms, grammatical mistakes, search bars that don’t search well and pop-ups. There is a more detailed post about it on Econsultancy blog and you can also follow the checklist to double-check your website’s quality.

Take-away Test your website on different people before making it public

Benefits

• Gives you insight on what people want.
• Decreases chances of users bouncing off your website.

5) Loading… Please Wait

Last and not the least, bear in mind that your website will be seen on desktops and mobile devices running different internet bandwidths. Your website should load fast enough on each platform. Check out the following tools to test your website’s loading time and remove the luggers:

Google’s Chrome browser extension

Google’s Firefox browser extension

Yahoo’s Firefox browser extension

Take-away: Your website should take less than 2 seconds to load.

Benefits

• Increases website credibility

Visitor is more likely to explore more pages if they load quickly.

Hope you enjoyed the article! Please share your thoughts in the comments below :)