How to organise website content

Designing a website and aligning it with SEO efforts is not an easy task. This is why a lot of digital marketing companies have a designer on staff or have very good relationships with a handful of reliable designers that understand how SEO works. One of the most important areas (in addition to all of the others) in which designers and SEOs have to work closely together is the organisation of website content – or information architecture (IA) as it’s properly called.



At its most basic, information architecture needs to suit users’ needs, as opposed to website owners’ preferences. Navigating a website should be largely intuitive. Users should have a sense of where they need to go based on their experience searching so many other websites. This means that IA should follow certain established patterns.



Let’s look at a few:

• The homepage: should always have a logo, tagline and enough information for users to know the purpose of the site straight away.

• About us: should include the company’s mission, values and objectives. You can include history and staff member bios.

• Information pages: service or product pages.

• Contact us: with all contact details – physical, postal, telephonic, fax and email. You can have a contact form but it’s always a good idea to include an email address because a lot of users don’t like the impersonal nature of contact forms, especially if you limit them to certain options.



Planning



Planning is essential in the organisation process. Start off by categorising your site into three tiers:

• First tier: homepage

• Second tier: main sections

• Third tier: sub-sections



In terms of what was said above, the homepage is self-explanatory, although you should try not to cram it with too much information or too many images.



The main sections are your information pages, so if you own a cheese shop you can have a page each for cheddar, gouda, feta, parmesan, camembert, brie, gorgonzola, etc.



The sub-sections are linked to your main sections. So, cheddar would link off to mature cheddar, extra mature cheddar, mild cheddar, etc.



Bring SEO into the picture



To help you SEO efforts designers should work with agencies to determine the order of the main sections. This will depend on the landing pages that will be the primary focus of the SEO campaign, which in turn depends on the keywords to be targeted. If more people search for feta cheese than any other cheese, then the search tabs should have the feta page appear directly after the homepage, followed by the succeeding popular searches.



The key is to structure information in the way that users want it. They want feta, so give it to them.



Your needs come last, which is why the About and Contact pages should come last in the tabs.



Users are everything in the online world. Structure your website with your users in mind and you’ll win fans, as well as help your digital marketing efforts.