What Your Site Hierarchy Looks Like (Design, Index, Links, and Journey)
So many companies I work with focus so much of their time on their home page, navigation, and subsequent pages. Many of them are bloated, with unnecessary content and pages that no one reads – yet they still ensure they are out there. Designers and agencies sit down and develop the site with a great hierarchy in mind that typically looks like this:
They hope that link juice and prospects properly flow from the most important page in the hierarchy to the least important. That’s not the way it really happens, though.
As Google discovers your site and the links that point to your content, Google begins to develop its interpretation of your site hierarchy based on the link quantity to each destination as well as the URL structure.
It’s difficult to understand that just because you think that you’ve designed a hierarchy that matters and that focuses attention where you’d like it to be, doesn’t mean that’s how your site is discovered and actually utilized!
As you design your site hierarchy, you’ll want to keep this in mind:
- With your page navigation and menus, how does your site look hierarchically?
- With internal linking and URL structure, how will a search engine index your site and understand your site hierarchy?
- How are your customers navigating the site (not necessarily the home page) when they arrive at your site?
Visualizing each of these is helpful and ensures that your site is optimized for your home page visitor, search engine visitor, and conversions.
Design accordingly!
