How Outline Online optimise the structure of your site – Part 3
We know how to sort out the structure of your site.
11. Organise your URL’s according to categories
Not only does this act as a type of breadcrumb, but it also improves the general user experience. Branching off your “pillar URL’s” assists in guiding the user through their online journey. It reminds them where they are in the click-through process. An example of this would be using www.outlineonline.co.za/product as a pillar URL and simply making the end-product URL www.outlineonline.co.za/product/e-commerce-website.
12. Create a sitemap
A sitemap is a document that tell your users (and more importantly, Google) how to navigate around your website. Having a sitemap helps all the different search engines understand the structure of your site when crawling it. Sitemaps are also extremely helpful in terms of prioritising the importance of certain website pages. There are quite a few tools that can assist in creating a sitemap, but it’s how this information is used and displayed that counts.
13. Get rid of old content
Whether its old copy stored in the backend of your site or old products lost in your e-commerce inventory, it’s not worth keeping. What you need to remember is that search engines don’t make any exceptions when it comes to what they find when crawling your site. Irrelevant data found and processed by these engines can seriously affect the information you advertise in searches. So keep that workspace clean!
14. Try and focus on people, not bots
As much as it might seem we are pushing you to base your site structure on what search engines want, it’s important to keep that human element. A smart way to do this, is to simply sort out the structure of your site with the user experience in mind. Creating your website in laymen terms can be helpful i.e., getting to the right page in minimal clicks, adding clever internal links and calls to action. This can be seen as a means-to-an-end, as search engines reward websites that help users answer their questions. In other words, if your users love your site, Google will too.
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