Site architecture is how the pages of the site are planned out and relate to each other. Site structure is important from a SEO and customer perspective and can deteriorate over time.

1. Site Architecture and Usability
Keeping your
customers and
happy
at the same time.

2. About Peter Mead
Peter Mead, SEO and IT

3. The Basics...
What do we mean by site architecture?
Site architecture is how the pages of the site are planned out and relate to each
other. Site structure is important from a SEO and customer perspective and can
deteriorate over time – so keep an eye on it.

4. The more levels a visitor goes
down to find the content the
more you will lose.
Try and keep all pages to 3
levels where possible. (4max)
Watch out for the rabbit hole…

5. Help Google Find your content
Google and other search engines use “spiders” to crawl the web.
They want to understand the sites content and structure. Don’t hide it!
Sometimes there are pages that you don’t want search engines to go to.
Websites use a sitemap to tell the spiders where they can and cannot go.
Problems with a sitemap will make it impossible for some pages to rank at all.

6. Internal Linking
Internal linking is very important for usability, seo and
google.
Logical menu interface is the most logical starting point for
linking pages together.
Depending on application consider
Sidebar
Footer
On page links to relevant content.
If it makes sense to a customer it makes sense to Google
Don’t leave a page marooned!

7. Blog planning - Categories
Quality, fresh content is important for a website to grow and rank but can create
a messy sitemap if not managed.
1. Plan your posts in advance.
2. Plan the categories that make sense to customers
3. Plan blogs around keywords that we will identify below
4. Keep an eye on automatically generated pages

8. Getting your sitemap
A good starting point is to access and assess your sitemap. This is how Google
sees your site.
Check yourdomain.com.au/sitemap.xml
Free tool (requires download)
Screaming Frog SEO Crawler
https://www.screamingfrog.co.uk/seo-spider/
Check Google Search Console to make sure sitemap is correct

9. Using Sitemap to plan Keywords
Once you have your sitemap – you can use it to more accurately plan and
implement a keyword strategy.
Look at each page as a separate keyword where possible
Paid tools can help identify keywords with traffic – SemRush and Moz
Adwords can help if you are running a campaign (min spend required)
Main keyword on top page – more “long tail” as you get deeper into site advised

10. Usability
Usability is important for customers and therefore Google.
What we don’t want:
1. Broken links
2. Complex, Deep site structure
3. Duplicate content
4. Crawl issues
5. Aggressive popups
What we want:
1. Logical and easy to use menu
2. Fast page load time
3. Appropriate Call to action (CTA)
4. Optimised for mobile – intuitive
5. Easy to read and interact
6. Relevant, accurate content

11. Audit your site:
Google Search Console : Free Tool you should be able to access through the
Google profile associated with your domain. Best place to start.
Can check errors / warnings from Google directly, look at traffic patterns and
check crawl errors amongst other things.

12. Important areas to start
Google Analytics: Free Tool you should be able to access through the Google
profile associated with your domain. Follows audience behaviour.
Can check live traffic and historical behaviour. Bounce rate and session duration
can be a great indicator of usability. Can also track conversions and customer
path.

13. Paid Tools:
SEMrush : Paid Tool with great features.
SEMrush has the ability to do a site audit, plan keywords and monitor results
$99 USD / Month
Can pull data from Google search console - Free Promo Code Below
The code: PETERMEADIT-4YT0JW8P
The activation link: SEMrush Promo
The free 2 weeks can be activated till September 24th.

14. Moz
Another Good Audit / Monitoring site.
$99USD and up. Checks for crawl errors, monitors rankings vs competitors.

15. Adwords
Technically a free service but recently
restricted to those paying for AdWords.
Can be used to check volume of traffic
for a given keyword as well as
suggesting associated ones.
Will also give an estimated cost per
click if you chose to advertise. Can be
used to estimate difficulty of a given
keyword.

16. Google Mobile Friendly Tool
https://search.google.com/test/mobile-friendly
Great Tool to check that your page is mobile friendly

17. PageSpeed Insights
https://developers.google.com/speed/pagespeed/insights/
Google insight into the speed of your site.
Can be used to check mobile and desktop
speeds.

18. Top 5 - Takeaways
1. Audit and understand your site structure
2. Allocate keywords to each page based on estimated traffic and relevance
3. Use the tools that you have access to to monitor your site
4. Make sure your site loads fast - Mobile and desktop
5. Usability is important. Build for the customer first - that’s what Google wants!