For online stores, the page structure is extremely important. For the simple reason that online shops often have more pages than, for example, a regular blog has. With X-number of categories, subcategories and, in particular, product pages.
So when it comes to side structure and online stores, it's about making user experience the best possible for customers. It shall be easy to search for specific product groups or products, while navigating back and forth between them.
A good page structure will make it easier for customers and search engines to find the landing pages in your online store.
So the question is, how do you proceed and what rules do you have to follow in terms of good side structure?
When looking at page structure, it is good to have some traffic rules to deal with. There are three good rules that all online shops should take into account when looking at web page structure:
- Make it simple and scalable.
- Keep each page 3 (or fewer) click from the website.
- Do it specifically - but naturally.
If you follow these rules, the starting point is promising. But even with these simple rules, you can go into traps that weaken the SEO part of your website.
Here is an example of how it should not be done:
Yeah, here's chaos, and yes -- several online stores have structures that are almost as bad as this.
Here it is primarily almost impossible to understand the logic behind each category and subcategory. Here you mix several categories into each other and the logic disappears along the way.
It's not scalable. For each time a new category appears, you need to reorganize your existing categories and subcategories, which eventually become chaos.
And last but not least, for SEO, this side structure is way too extensive. For an online store, the majority of the page's authority will be the main page.
With this type of page structure, the page authority will be weakened for each step further down the process. Before you reach the bottom and the products, this authority will be very weak.
As with everything else in online commerce, it is important to focus on the target group you want to reach – your customers and their experience of your website.
If you think the structure is illogical, difficult to understand or impossible to navigate, you will also be guaranteed to be able to find the same way to your potential customers and search engines.
Make the structure of your online store/webpage a user-friendly experience and a search engine dream!
If you want to read more about page structure and architecture, I recommend you take a look at Brian Dean's post on SEO side structure.