How to structure your website for maximum visibility in the search engines

To drive consistent traffic and increase sales, you must ensure that your website structure is optimised. A well-structured website improves user experience, makes it easier for search engines to crawl your content, and ultimately enhances your visibility on platforms like Google. In this strategy, we’ll explore how to structure your ecommerce website for maximum visibility. We’ll break it down into four sections: how create a good website structure, examples, implementation, and how to measure your impact.

Why Website Structure Matters for SEO & Customer Experience

Website structure refers to how the pages of your ecommerce site are organized and linked together. A clear, logical structure makes it easier for users to find the products they are looking for and helps search engines understand the hierarchy and relationships between your pages.

Search engines use bots to crawl websites. These bots follow links to understand what your site is about. If your website has a disorganized structure, important pages might be buried too deeply, making it difficult for search engines to index them properly. Moreover, a poorly structured site can lead to a poor user experience, increasing bounce rates and decreasing overall rankings.

A well-organized site structure offers several SEO benefits, including:

• Better crawling and indexing: Search engines can discover and index all your relevant pages efficiently.
• Improved keyword targeting: Proper structure allows you to implement keyword-focused URLs and category pages.
• Enhanced user experience: A clean, logical layout makes it easy for customers to find products, leading to longer visits and more conversions.

How to create the perfect structure for your Ecommerce website

Usually there are a number of different themes relevant for using as a base for your site structure. Each theme is a route someone might take to search for your products.  

Using different methods to categorise your products

First identify the categorisation methods for your website, to identify these we list phrases relevant to the following

• Product Category or Type: A hierarchy based on the types of products you sell.  For example a fashion website would have Jackets, Jumpers, Shirts, T-Shirts etc
• By Collection or Range: This could be a common theme like gender (Mens / Womens / Unisex), colour (Red, Blue, Green...) or a collection or range defined by the manufacturer or brand (eg Submariner by Rolex).
• By Use or Activity: For sports retailers the activity could be the sport (Football, Rugby, Running or Cycling).  For clothing retailers the use could be Wet Weather, Summer, Winter, Formal, Casual, Party Wear.
• By Occasion: Christmas, Valentines day, Wedding etc
• By Problem / Solution or Symptom: A beauty brand might categorise their products by solutions for a problem eg Sensitive Skin, Oily Skin, Anti Aging, or Acne.   A cycling retailer might categorise into commuting, triathlon or collapsible cycles
• By Material or Ingredient: This is relevant to many retailers, for clothing it could be Wool, Cotton, Silk, Cashmere or Leather.  For vitamins this would be Magensium, Omega 3 Fish Oil or Lutien.
• By Brand: For multi brand retailers this is very important, each brand should have it's own section.  Eg Nike, Adidas, New Balance eg

Identifying important keywords and phrases

Now you identified the categorisation methods you can look at relevant combinations and groups in order to identify important keywords and phrases.  Use keyword research, analytics , search console and onsite search reports to help.  Some examples might be:

• Wool Jackets
• Mens Jackets
• Barbour Mens Jackets
• Green Jackets

We'll use these phrases to identify the core pillars to our site structure, some examples of this are:

• A sports fashion brand Identifying that activity as the main categorises, with product types as the sub category:some text
  • Runningsome text
    • Running Shorts
    • Running Shirts
    • Running Jackets
  • Cyclingsome text
    • Cycling Jackets
    • Cycling Shirts
    • Cycling Bibs
• A skin care brand identifying that skin concern and product types are both importantsome text
  • By Productsome text
    • Cleansers
    • Pads
    • Toners
  • By Skin Concernsome text
    • Sensitive Skin
    • Breakouts and blemishes
    • Blackheads
    • Oily Skin

When defining our main navigation we try to keep the top level items to between 5 and 8 options so as not to overwhelm visitors.

If you sell a wide range of product (for example Amazon) you might want to choose one primary method of categorisation, most likely by Product Category or Type will make the most sense, as Amazon does.  You can then use on page links, footer links or a blog to highlight the other methods.

If you have a smaller range of products you can take advantage of this and use multiple categorisation methods Product Category / Type and Activity.  See our examples below.

Planning different navigation options

There are a number of different types of navigation open to you, make sure you take advantage of all of them to maximise you websites visibility in the search engines and customer journeys:

• Main Navigation
• On page navigation
• On page CMS components
• Footer Navigation  

Now you can use a spreadsheet or mindmap to plan out your site structure using the above features.

Examples

To better understand how an optimised structure looks, let’s examine a couple of ecommerce websites that have mastered the art of SEO-friendly layouts:

Example 1: Amazon
Amazon, one of the largest online retailers, has an extremely clear structure. The website uses a hierarchical structure where product categories and subcategories are clearly delineated. This makes it easy for users to navigate between sections like "Electronics," "Clothing," and "Home Goods," and for search engines to index them.

Amazon also uses breadcrumb navigation, which helps users and search engines understand where they are on the site and how pages relate to one another. For example, you might see something like "Home > Electronics > Smartphones > iPhone 14" at the top of the page.

Example 2: Zappos
Zappos, a major footwear and clothing retailer, uses a similar structured hierarchy. Each product category has its own page, optimized for search terms related to footwear, clothing, and accessories. Zappos also implements keyword-rich URLs and easy-to-understand navigation.

Like Amazon, Zappos employs breadcrumbs and clearly labeled categories to enhance both user experience and search engine visibility. They also make use of internal linking, such as recommending "similar products," which encourages better crawling by search engines and keeps users on the site longer.

How to implement

When implementing your website structure make sure you consider the following

a) When creating a your main navigation and on page navigation

• The options available to you will depend on the theme:  Each platform (Shopify, BigCommerce, Magento etc) will have different options available and these will likely depend on the theme you are using.
• On-page category links: Are very important both to search engiens and as a navigation aide to users.

b) Use Keyword-Rich URLs

Make sure that your URL structure reflects the hierarchy of your site and includes relevant keywords. A URL like “www.mysite.com/womens-clothing/dresses” is more SEO-friendly than a generic one like “www.mysite.com/page123.”

c) Internal Linking

Link between related pages to help both search engines and users discover more of your content. For example, if a customer is viewing a specific shirt, you can link to other shirts in the same category or to accessories that complement that product.

d) Mobile First

Ensure that your structure is responsive on mobile devices. Search engines like Google prioritize mobile-friendly websites, and with more users shopping via smartphones, a mobile-optimized structure is crucial.

e) Implement Breadcrumb Navigation

Breadcrumbs show users the path they’ve taken to reach a specific page. This not only improves user navigation but also helps search engines understand the structure of your site.

How to measure impact

Once you’ve implemented an optimised website structure, it's essential to track its impact to ensure you're moving in the right direction. Here are several metrics you can use:

Organic Traffic

One of the key indicators of SEO success is an increase in organic traffic. You can monitor this using tools like Google Analytics. Look for an upward trend in traffic coming from search engines after restructuring your site.

Crawl Errors

Google Search Console can help you identify any crawl errors that may have arisen after changes in your site structure. If pages are not being indexed or there are errors, you’ll need to revisit your structure and fix any issues.

Page Ranking

Track the ranking of your key category and product pages for target keywords. After implementing a better structure, you should see improvements in your page rankings on search engine results pages (SERPs). Tools like Ahrefs or SEMrush can help with this analysis.

Conversions

Ultimately, the goal of restructuring your ecommerce website is to improve sales. Keep an eye on your conversion rates. An improved structure should lead to more sales as users find it easier to navigate and purchase items from your site.

Conclusion

The structure of your ecommerce website plays a crucial role in determining your success in search engines. By organizing your website with a clear hierarchy, using keyword-optimized URLs, implementing internal linking, and using mobile-friendly design, you can improve both user experience and your search engine visibility. Regularly monitor key metrics like organic traffic, page rankings, and conversions to measure the impact of your efforts. Following these best practices will help you stay ahead in the highly competitive world of ecommerce.