Effective
Web Design

How to structure your website?

A well structured website is important for 2 main reasons. Firstly and most importantly, it is good for users to quickly and easily navigate through your site and enjoy everything you have to offer there, but also a good structure will appeal to search engines and get you listed higher in their page rankings.

Here are a few guidelines you should use to make the most out of your website design and increase exposure to the masses.

Stick to Standards

Structure needs to be planned before any development begins at all, because if you ever wanted to change or expand the site in the future, a well written structure is easier to modify and cope with.

Most websites have navigation bars at the top or sides and a panel containing all the content itself. They also have an overall header and footer containing more links and information. These are standards as far as a modern website design is concerned and although being creative is always a good thing, the basic framework should still remain intact. If you want to look further into what kind of layout works the best, then check out this navigation methods study, you can also take a look at other popular websites to see how they lay out their sections.

Using the W3 HTML Validation service keeps your HTML in tip-top condition and search engines like this. Having 100% valid HTML boosts page rank, your website will be valued higher for relevant search terms on google and other search sites which will increase traffic. Developing valid HTML is a professional practice and good to get into if you are not already familiar with the different document types.

Navigation

Obviously, if you have a page on your site, you will want people to see it, so make sure you link everything on your site together in an organized fashion and provide a clear hierarchy of pages or sections to avoid visitors getting lost in your content. You may want to provide a site map (or site index) to your visitors so that they can access the right section they want with minimal clicks.

Other methods such as Breadcrumb navigation can be used to organize your site further and will make it easier for a visitor to know exactly where they are. Don’t presume a visitor will use browser buttons navigate back and forth through the website, you must think of your pages as separate entities where all the navigation controls are there for the users convenience.

The home page is the starting point for visitors to work from, so make sure it is the most user friendly and best organized page on the site.

The right words

Relevant wording on your page titles and keywords is important for easy indexing on search engines but do not try to deceive them or you may be shunned.
Google provides these Webmaster Guidelines which I highly recommend as google will be an important part of exposing your website to as many people as possible.

Expect this post to be updated soon with more details.