Website page structure has two aspects.  The first refers to the structure, or hierarchy, of pages on your page and the second refers to how an individual page is structured.

Page Hierarchy

There are good reasons for arranging your pages into a logical hierarchy.

  1. It makes creation of multi-level navigation buttons very easy as the levels in your hierarchy will match the buttons or links in your navigation bar.
  2. You can use the hierarchical structure to target additional, very specific, keywords and phrases.
  3. Hierarchical site maps are easier to understand both for human visitors and search engine spiders to help index your site.

Structuring a page

Making all your ‘content’ pages following a general page structure is a good idea as it gives your pages a consistent look-and-feel and gives you a checklist to ensure you page is optimised correctly.

Top tips for structuring a page.

  • Breadcrumb trail

    The term  breadcrumb trail refers to the hierarchical list of links showing your position on the site, usually relative to the home page.    Adding a breadcrumb trail makes it easy for visitors to visualise where they are within your sites hierarchy and also give you an opportunity to add additional search engine optimisation to the page (each ‘node’ should pertain to a key word or phrase).

  • Headings

    Search engine spiders, or webbots, assume terms in heading tags (h1 -> h6) are more significant than the rest of the text on the page.  Not surprisingly, h1 being more significant than h2 and so on.  You should structure each of your pages so the most important heading is in h1 as near to the top of the page as possible.  The most important sub-headings should then be in h2 with their own immediate sub-headings at h3.  Continue the hierarchy down as many levels as is necessary to structure you page.

  • Title tag

    The TITLE Tag resides in the HEAD section of your page.  The text of your title tag is shown on the top of a visitor’s browser when they view your page and is shown as the title line in search entry listing pages.

  • Meta tags

    Use Meta tags may not be as significant to search engines as they once were but you should still take advantage of what weight they do still have.  Enter the main 3-5 keyphrases that describe the subject of the page.  Make sure each meta tag is used in the body of the article at least once.

  • Meta Description

    A page’s Meta Description is used by Search engines in their free listings. If you don’t include a meta description then the search engine will arbitrarily extract text from the body of the page which may not give a meaningful synopsis of what the page is about.

  • Article Structure

    The main article text on a page should be between 400 and 800 words as a rule of thumb.  Write in a conversational manner, as if talking to a friend.  Keep paragraphs short and avoid using fancy words or jargon.

  • Pictures

    Try and include at least one picture on every page on your site.  Even if there is no real obvious need for one, adding an image or two adds to the visual appeal of the page.

    Take the opportunity to name your pictures to complement your key phrases on the page.  For example, if you have a page aimed at ‘clay pigeon shooting’ then endeavour to give a picture on the site a name like beginners-clay-pigeon-shooting.jpg.  This will score you additional points with search engines, especially in results for surfers searching for images of ‘beginners clay pigeon shooting’.

    Make sure each image has  ALT text and make sure the contents contain at least one of your key phrases on that page.

    Tip: Don’t add ALT text to logos and images used as part of your site’s layout.  ALT text is read out to unsighted or partially sighted visitors and re-reading the same thing over and over will only annoy them.

  • Links

    Google gives a lot of weight to sites that have a large number of incoming links.  You should definitely try to create links coming into your site but when it comes to putting links to other sites on your site, you should follow a few rules:

    • Only put a link on your site if it is relevant to your site.
    • Regularly check all links you have on your site are unbroken (i.e. the page you linked to hasn’t moved or been deleted).
    • Don’t rely on reciprocal links; they don’t have the same weight with Google and you need to regularly monitor the other parties are still displaying your link on their site.
Automated program used to extract information from websites.  Used extensively by Search engines
Synopsis of page subject held within the head tag
Text describing an image or other page item.  Displayed on browsers where images are disabled