Category Archives: search engine optimization

new-website-vs-established-one
Categories search engine optimization

Ranking a New Website VS an Established One

SEO is an essential aspect of any website. Thus, it is natural to want your site to rank higher on search engine result pages (SERPs) during organic searches. According to a study, organic search drives 53.3% of all web traffic, making it vital for your website to appear on search results.

Organic search allows your business to get discovered by people who don’t know about your business but require your products and services. But it all comes down to how your site ranks on Google.

This article explores all you need to know about how to rank your website higher on Google, along with other details. Let’s dive right in.

Check Website Ranking

Google does specifically publish the rankings of targeted keywords in any tool. It crawls through millions of domains and web pages to curate significant information for users during organic searches.

Thus, only those websites that optimized their web pages for those keywords and fulfilled other requirements will show up on SERPs. However, there are some tools you can use to know your current website rankings.

Some of these site ranker tools include Check Page Rank that allows users check website ranking in Google search. It also provides additional information such as domain authority score, Alexa USA and Global ranks, page authority, backlinks, and many more site rank data.

Other tools to rank websites include Ahrefs’ Rank Tracker, Web CEO, and Small SEO Tools.  

New Website vs Established Website

Regarding page rank checking on Google, there are distinct differences between new and established websites. Some of the criteria are quite different. So, if you’re wondering why your new website isn’t ranked higher compared to others, you might want to read this section.

We will explore some differences between site ranks on new and established websites.

New Websites

Regarding SEO rankings, newer websites are seemingly challenging to optimize. This is mainly because it is new in a terrain filled with millions of similar websites with better domain and page authority.

Thus, if you want to rank websites that are new, you should consider the following:

● Freshness. What newer websites have over older websites is freshness. You need to frequently publish new content to establish authority on Google. You should also consider adding more service pages to your website.

● Reputation. Newer websites can improve their site rank data by registering their domains on reputation directories like Google My Business, Yelp, and other niche-related directories.

● Supplementation. You can also rank websites that are newer by investing in other digital marketing strategies such as paid ads, social media marketing, and paid search.

You can achieve all of this quickly with a professional SEO expert.

Established Websites

Older website ranking Google check has a more significant advantage because it can be easily optimized. Some of the improvements made can be noticeable within weeks. You only get penalized when you violate Google’s guidelines with spam links.

Here’s why an older site ranks better than new ones:

● Authority. Older domains have been indexed by Google’s bots for a long time. Thus, even if they don’t rank higher, they can be easily optimized as they have already established authority.

● Trust. Google will typically rank older websites higher than new ones as it is safer. The reason is that Google considers them more trustworthy in providing answers to users than new ones.

You can also hire an SEO expert to help optimize and rank your older websites during organic searches.

How to Rank Your Brand New Website

You can deploy different tips to rank your website higher on Google. These tactics include:

● Research targeted keywords. Your web pages need to rank for specific keywords during an organic search. For that to happen, you need to conduct keyword research using tools such as Ahrefs Ubersuggest, SEMrush, Google Keyword Planner, SECockpit, Moz, KWFinder, and KeywordTool.

● Create title tags with the target keywords. After researching the keywords, you need to incorporate them into your title tags and meta description for that web page.

● Use keywords sparingly throughout the web page. The target keywords should be used sparingly throughout the web page. You should be careful not to overstuff your web pages with keywords.

● Use outbound links. Outbound links bring traffic to your website, especially when it is acknowledged, and the favor is returned with a backlink.

● Put your target keywords in URLs. If you’re linking to another page on your website, you should use the target keywords for that page.

● Publish long content. According to reports, longer content improves site ranks on Google. Aim for a minimum of 1,000 words and a maximum of around 2,000 words.

● Take advantage of internal linking. You can also improve and check your blog ranking by linking different parts of your website.

Make your website load faster. A slow website is not only bad for SEO but your potential visitors. You should ensure that your web design is optimized for fast loading.

● Make your website mobile-friendly. Your website needs to be optimized for smartphones for it to rank properly.

These tips will rank your website higher on Google in no time.

How to Restore Old Website’s Rankings

How do you restore the ranking of your old website? Follow the tips below:

● Audit your site. You must audit your site to ensure it follows current SEO guidelines. Thus, you need to take a look at your site topics, content, and site architecture.

● Categorize content. Your content needs to be properly categorized and siloed to create a structure for Google’s bots to crawl and index. Check your internal and external URLs, meta titles and descriptions, and the keywords to optimize them.

● Build backlinks. You can improve your site ranking history by building backlinks from other reputable sites. You can reach out to the site admin and discuss sharing links.

● Write guest posts. You can also increase site ranks on Google by writing guest posts on other sites and earning backlinks from them to your website.

● Promote your blogs on social media. You can check your blog ranking and improve it by sharing links to your social media accounts.

● Follow Google’s guidelines. You should follow Google’s guidelines and avoid manipulative and deceptive SEO strategies to not get penalized.

If you don’t know how to deploy these tips, contact a professional SEO expert to handle it for you.

Why Do Old Websites Rank Higher in Google?

The answer is pretty simple:

● Site authority. Older websites have been crawled and indexed for a longer time compared to new websites. Thus, the older site will rank higher than the newer ones.

● Trustworthiness. Google considers older websites trustworthy compared to newer ones. This is because older websites have been indexed longer. Thus, there’s a high possibility that Google will rank websites that are older over new ones.

That doesn’t mean your new websites won’t be able to compete with established ones. All you need to do is follow the SEO instructions in the previous section to improve your site rank data.

How Long Does It Take to Rank on Google?

According to this data from Ahrefs, it takes about 61 to 182 days for pages to rank on Google’s Top 10 SERPs. However, it should be noted that it’s only workable for 5.7% of websites. For a majority of other websites, it might take a longer time.

How to Check Website Ranking

It’s pretty simple to check website ranking in Google search. All you need to do is log in to any of the tools to check website ranking. Some of these tools are free, but others come with free trials to explore their premium features.

Tools to Check Website Ranking

Some of these tools to check ranking in Google includes:

Moz Pro

Advanced Web Ranking

ProRank Tracker

SEMrush

Ahrefs

With these tools, you can see ranking of websites, whether new or established.

Rank Your Website Higher on Google With Abstrax Web

Abstrax Web is a leading digital marketing agency designed to help businesses gain more visibility and website traffic by improving their SEO strategies. Our services include web design, SEO silo, web development, content marketing, website architecture, web analytics, and many more.

Reach out to us to see how we can help your business gain more leads and improve your bottom line.

seo-and-ppc
Categories search engine optimization

Difference Between SEO and PPC

Regarding search engine marketing for your website, two strategies stand out: SEO and PPC. Yo u have heard about them and have wondered which one brings the most results. While both serve the same purpose – get leads to your website – they are distinct in operation and functionality.

We will look at them shortly:

Search engine optimization (SEO) is optimizing your website pages to rank for specific queries on search engine result pages (SERPs). Also known as organic SEO, it includes making sure Google’s bots crawl through your web pages to understand what it’s all about. After such information has been collected, Google then saves it to an index, pending when people search for that content.

The more your website ranks higher on SERPs, the greater the chances of receiving more clicks, leads, and conversions for your business. According to a report, 64% of SEO PPC specialists actively incorporate SEO in their digital marketing efforts.

On the other hand, PPC search marketing involves running ads on search engines to rank for specific queries when they’re searched. These ads are run on Google Ads to drive leads, traffic, and conversions from their potential audience.

PPC is a broad concept that shouldn’t be limited to websites. Digital marketers use PPC to drive ads to their intended audience on social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, YouTube, and others. Paid search marketing spending clocked at $144.8 billion in 2021 compared to 2020s $58 billion. This is a testament to how beneficial it is to businesses.

You might wonder about the better digital strategy between paid search engine vs SEO. This article will explore the difference between pay per click and search engine marketing.  

SEO vs PPC

Pay-per-click advertising and search engine optimization are based on the same focus: to drive visitors to websites. Both of them take a different approach to achieving that. While SEO is implemented to rank organically on SERPs, PPC requires you to pay to rank for the same queries.

How does this play out? We discuss it below:

Ranking

How is ranking different when comparing PPC vs SEO? Paid search marketing appears at the top of search engine results pages when specific keywords are searched. Thus, business owners opting for paid SEO get the first shot at grabbing visitors and customers.

Paying for Google Ads to rank your website higher than others doesn’t end there. You’d also have to consider some factors, including the targeted keywords, your web copy, keywords in your landing page, and other factors.

On the other hand, organic SEO appears in the middle of the SERPs, just below paid ads. Ranking higher through organic keywords requires you to optimize your website for targeted keywords, review your meta titles and descriptions, and structure and flow of your web content.

Conversion Rates

Organic vs PPC conversion rates are integral to your digital marketing SEO PPC campaigns. Your conversion data is proof of whether your search engine marketing efforts are working or not. When it comes to paid SEO, optimized and targeted keywords will likely get more conversions.

One of the reasons for this is that PPC ads appear at the top of SERPs for targeted keywords. When users see what they want from the meta title and description, they’d click on it and visit the site.

Thus, PPC campaigns gain more conversions for targeted keywords. On the other hand, SEO campaigns can also rank higher for targeted keywords. However, they will appear just below PPC campaigns.

When users go through the PPC links and are unsatisfied with what they find, they could opt for the next best thing – links from organic search.

Both of these campaigns gain visibility but paid SEO receives more conversions – as long as the ads keep running.

Traffic

When it comes to website traffic, which strategy is better is between SEO and PPC? Organic SEO is bound to receive more website traffic compared to PPC campaigns. This is because if you optimize your web pages for targeted keywords, they will rank amongst the top 5 positions on SERPs.

Each of these positions gets an equal shot at receiving website traffic, depending on the content displayed on their meta title and description. So, you have a regular flow of website visitors as long as your page is properly ranked on SERPs.

Here’s the tricky aspect: PPC search marketing also gets an equal shot at receiving website traffic. What is PPC traffic? It is simply the traffic you generate from your PPC campaigns. For this to work, you must fund your Google Ads account to run those ads. When the ads have exhausted the funds in the account, the ads will automatically be removed.

If you’re considering longevity, organic SEO is best. However, not everyone gets to rank for targeted keywords. With a web analytics tool like Google Search Console or Google Analytics, you can monitor your website traffic.

Cost

Cost is an essential aspect of search engine marketing. From their mere definitions, SEO is free while PPC is bought. But it is not completely conclusive.  

Implementing SEO to rank for specific keywords is an arduous task. You’d need a lot of time to conduct keyword research, on-page optimization, earn backlinks from other websites, and build a compelling SEO silo website architecture to stand a chance.

There are zero shortcuts to SEO for businesses. You have to do the work; if you don’t know how you’d need to hire an SEO PPC specialist to take care of it.

On the other hand, PPC costs depend on a host of factors. Some factors include the popularity of the targeted keywords, the number of websites bidding for the keywords, and the ad positions for the same keywords.

You’d most likely spend more with PPC than SEO.

Ease of Use

To effectively use PPC vs content marketing, you need to know how they work. SEO takes a lot of time to get started and optimize your web pages for excellent results. Depending on your strategy, it might take months of consistent tweaking to start receiving visitors, leads, and conversions. You can hire an SEO expert to take care of it for your website.

It’s different with PPC. All you need to do is understand how Google Adwords work, bid for the targeted keywords, and optimize your web copy to rank on SERPs. When you consider SEO vs paid ads in terms of ease of use, PPC is miles ahead.

Organic Keywords vs Paid Keywords

PPC and SEO are different, and so are the keywords when they appear on SERPs. We will look at the difference between SEO organic vs paid keywords.

● Position. While paid keywords appear at the top of SERPs, organic keywords are just below paid search.

● Clicks. Due to their rankings on SERPs, paid SEO gets more clicks than organic keywords.

● Effectiveness. Paid search is instant as long as you bid and pay for the keywords. The organic search takes a lot of time and effort to rank for targeted keywords.

● Longevity. Organic SEO is long-lasting as long as you constantly conduct on-page optimization for all your web pages. PPC campaigns last as much as your budget.

● Execution. While PPC is faster to execute, organic SEO takes longer to pull off.

Now, you know the difference between organic SEO and PPC keywords.

Does PPC Help SEO

Beyond instant digital marketing success, PPC goes a long way to help SEO campaigns. For instance, when you subscribe to Adwords, you will see valuable keywords driving traffic and conversion to websites and those that aren’t. Thus, you know what your customers are searching for and optimize your website for those keywords.

PPC also drives brand awareness to your website. When people land on your website and see engaging content, they might subscribe to your newsletters and pay for products and services. They will most likely engage with your content – even if you don’t run PPC ads.

PPC also helps you to gain local leads. For instance, many people conduct ‘near me’ queries on search engines to locate the nearest business to patronize. You can incorporate this in your PPC campaigns to drive the most local leads to your business.

Conclusion

PPC and SEO are crucial to search engine marketing. They are beneficial in gathering visibility, improving your organic content, and optimizing your landing pages. Now you know the difference between SEO and PPC and how to effectively use them.

What is topical Authority
Categories search engine optimization

What is Topical Authority?

Topical authority, in SEO terms, is the perceived authority of a website over a particular subject or range of issues. This is essential in ranking higher than others on search engine results pages (SERPs.)

Topic authority helps signal to Google or visitors that the website is quite skilled in the search query. It’s also a measure of your expertise and knowledge about a particular niche. Thus, the more informative your content is, the more Google perceives it as an authority in that field.

Take the example below: When you hit type ‘World news’ on Google search and hit send, you will find the following:

Google considers websites such as BBC, CNN, and The Guardian as topical authorities on matters concerning World news.

Imagine your website showing up on search results like this. If Google realizes your website publishes valuable content about a topical subject, it will rank it above others during organic searches.

This article will discuss everything you need to know about topical authority in SEO and how to implement it for your website.

Why Topical Authority Is Important?

Topical authority SEO is essential in your web rankings. But what makes it so important that you must establish it for your website?

We look at the reasons below:

You Will Earn More Backlinks

Topical authority helps you to earn backlinks from other websites. When you consistently publish high-quality content on your website, it makes you an authority in Google’s eyes and others.

After finding relevant content there, other website owners or content editors will share a link to your website. The more links to your website, the more valuable it becomes to Google.

You Build More Trust With Readers

A topical authority is essential in building trust with your readers. When you continually publish great topical relevance about certain areas, they will keep coming back to read and learn more.

They will quickly recommend your website to others who need similar information. This goes a long way in increasing leads and improving your bottom line. When more people trust your website, the more likely they will buy what you’re selling.

Topical authority keeps your website at the back of your visitors’ minds. So, they’d remember your website before anyone else when they need topical content.  

Google Ranks Your Website Higher

Content is king. What separates your websites from others is the type of content on yours. Google thrives on revealing valuable content to users.

So, when your web pages are filled with valuable content and adhere to other SEO guidelines, Google will place them ahead of others.

What Is Topical Relevance?

Topical relevance is how search engines like Google determine how important a web page is to user queries. When people search for content, Google’s bot crawls through millions of web pages in search of topically relevant content to display.

The process by which that happens is topical relevance. The determining factors include but are not limited to keyword research, backlinks, and the nature of the content.

Topical relevance is vital because it helps inform site crawlers on the search authority and reliability of the website. For instance, when high authority websites link to yours, you become relevant to Google, which will reflect on your page rankings.

Similarly, if your website is optimized with targeted keywords, it ranks higher in SERPs.

How Do You Gain Topical Authority?

Throughout the article, we’ve been discussing how essential topical authority is to the SEO performance of websites. But how do you pull it off? Follow these simple tips:

Choose Specific Niche

First, you need to select a niche to build authority in. If your content marketing is structured to explore different topics, your website will not be regarded as an authority.

Remember the saying: Jack of all trades; master of none. The same scenario plays out with websites. When visitors go through your website and discover that it explores different non-similar topics, they won’t want to trust or take advice from it.

During crawling and indexing, Google spots the same anomaly too. Thus, they won’t know what to rank your website for.

You need to choose a specific niche to stand out.

Conduct Keyword Research

After choosing a niche, you need to learn the topics your readers want to read on. More so, you need to know what questions they’re asking. Thus, you need to conduct keyword relevance research.

There are several ways to go about it. You can simply carry out Google customized search. Take the examples below for when you search what digital marketing is.

These sections give you an idea of what people are searching for when they look up digital marketing.

Another method is running keywords through keyword research. Consider the same example using keyword research tools.

Here, you’d find the keywords and questions generating the most searches. These keyword tools include Ahrefs Ubersuggest, SEMrush, Google Keyword Planner, SECockpit, Moz, KWFinder, and KeywordTool.

More so, you can also conduct a competitor analysis, by seeing the keywords they’re using to rank during an organic search.

These strategies help you understand the search authority and how it plays in SEO rankings.

Content Depth

After researching the keywords used, you need to create compelling content to match. Your website articles and blogs should be long-form and well-researched content. The articles should grab your audience from when they land on your page so they won’t leave.

Your content should contain images, infographics, videos, and other media that might help improve its visual appearance. According to research, longer content improves your SEO rankings. Your authority content should be 1,000 words minimum and around 2,000 words maximum.  

Topic Clustering

Topic clusters SEO is grouping several articles or pages under a central topic. It’s an organized approach to content creation and marketing.

Consider the example below:

Topic Clustering

You will see that the news is also categorized under topics such as Sports, Reel, Travel, Culture, and others. So, if someone wants to read up on happenings in the sports world, they will click Sports.

To establish authority in SEO, your website should have the following:

● Pillars. These are broad pages that link to several topic cluster pages.

● Topic clusters. These pages provide more in-depth answers to the pillar pages. A Sports pillar page on a news website can lead to topic clusters such as Football, Soccer, Basketball, Volleyball, and many others.

What Is Authority Content?

Authority content is the process of creating high-quality information to generate engagement, build trust, and provide help to a targeted audience. It’s a continuous process of publishing engaging content on your website or social media pages.

This often earns you backlinks from authority websites, including Wikipedia, government sites, university websites, and popular niche sites.

Releasing authority content is a continuous process. You should consistently release high-quality content that will resonate with your audience.

How to Build Topical Authority

Building topical authority is all about doing what works. Follow these steps:

● Choose a specific niche.

● Conduct keyword research.

● Create high-quality content.

● Establish topic clustering.

● Share your posts on social media.

Conclusion

A topical authority is vital for having a successful SEO campaign. These strategies and tips mentioned will help in your digital marketing strategy.

How Long Does SEO Take?
Categories search engine optimization

How Long Does SEO Take?

SEO is an abbreviation for “search engine optimization.” It is simply the process of optimizing your website so that it is more visible when people search for items or services connected to your business on search engines. The greater your site’s exposure in search engine rankings, the more likely you are to garner notice and attract new and returning clients.

SEO is an important part of digital marketing because people do trillions of searches every year, and  search is the key source of internet traffic for brands, complementing other marketing methods. Having more visibility and a better search engine ranking than your competitors could help your bottom line in a big way.

What is the time frame for seeing SEO results?

There is no definitive answer to the question of seo time frame. How long does seo take to work? The duration it takes to get organic results from SEO efforts, is a subject-matter most experts believe that it normally takes four to six months. By results, we refer to a quantifiable increase in traffic and the leads or conversions it generates. This doesn’t mean that you will definitely have reached your goal by this time, but you should expect to see results within this frame seo.

According to SEO Mechanic, in general, websites can produce results within four to six months. Forbes is also of the opinion that many SEO companies will tell you that it takes four to six months before you begin to see results. This is generally true, but keep in mind SEO results increase with time. However, Search Engine Magazine believes that within a few weeks, you may begin to observe gains in organic ranking and an increase in traffic for keyword themes with low competition. On the other hand, it might take a few months to finish a moderately competitive subject, but it might take a year or more to finish a very competitive one!

Why does SEO take so long?

Why does seo take so long? SEO is a tough game when it comes down to it. Just have a peek at the Search Engine Land Periodic Table of SEO Success Factors.

When it comes to SEO, there is so much to accomplish, and so much is outside the control of an SEO. Consider the competition, link building, reviews, social media history, and many other aspects that require time to truly manage or alter.

I believe it is beneficial to compare SEO to real estate. You purchase land (your domain name), then construct a home (your website) on that land, increasing its value (yay!). The value of your home has increased by double as a result of the addition of an extension (awesome content) and landscaping (on-page optimization).

However, one day, quite suddenly, the housing market crashed (algorithm update), and there’s nothing you could do about it. However, a few weeks later, after cleaning up and finishing the flooded basement (continuous optimization), renovating the outdated bathrooms (technical audit & fixes), and expanding your house further (awesome content), your home value is back on track and the chart is pointing back up.

Due to the numerous variables involved in SEO, outcomes are not linear (the housing market crash analogy above). The chart for organic growth will not rise at the projected rate month after month. Various occurrences cause the chart to be somewhat skewed. People will not look for a new automobile if a hurricane is approaching; Google’s algorithm may change without notice; a dealership may reduce branded advertising, resulting in decreased brand awareness; users may take an internet break around the holidays; etc.

Does SEO work? Yes SEO does but it takes time, however, you should see some changes right away and a steady rise in your organic search engine presence over the next few weeks and months.

make-your-website-faster

Factors can affect how long your SEO strategy takes.

1.The History of Your Site

A new domain will almost always take longer to achieve success than an established one, as it has not yet established its authority or accumulated backlinks. A well-established domain, on the other hand, will usually have a minimum level of authority and backlinks that point to it.

2.The Competition

Results can be seen considerably quicker in low-competition domains and in low-competition search queries than in competitive ones.

3. Your Resources

You can’t control a website’s past or the competition.

However, what you can manage is the resources that are put toward an SEO project. It’s crucial to grasp exactly how this plays a big factor in the length of time it takes to see results from a campaign. The more resources you’re able to invest in SEO, the faster you’ll usually notice benefits.

Domain Age

Simply put, “Domain Age” refers to the length of time a domain name has been in existence. A website that has been up for a while will have an older domain than one that was just registered.

Backlinks

Backlinks are links from one website to a page on another website. Backlinks are considered “votes” for a page by Google and other major search engines. Pages with several backlinks tend to score highly in organic search results.

In essence, backlinks are votes from other websites. Each vote indicates to search engines that the content is valuable, credible, and useful. Therefore, the greater the number of these “votes” your site has, the better it will rank on Google and other search engines.

Web hosting issues and google penalties

1. Slow loading speed or repeated outages

Your website’s slow performance steals visitors, SEO rankings, and conversions. Downtime is much worse: while your website is inaccessible, both your commercial opportunities and your reputation are vanishing. Therefore, slow performance and downtime are significant hosting difficulties.

2. Lack of safety

You wish to protect the data on your website. When your hosting company cannot assist, there is a problem. Shared hosting is perhaps the least secure type of hosting because it offers the least amount of privacy.

Google penalties are fines or bad effects that lower a website’s position in Google’s search results or perhaps delete it entirely. Google may apply a penalty if it feels a website violated its regulations or used “black-hat” SEO techniques. Google imposes punishments both humanly and algorithmically.

Web structure and architecture

Your site’s structure is the manner in which internal links and page hierarchy connect the various pages on your site. It refers to how the material on your website is organized and displayed so that an algorithm can accurately interpret its context. A good website structure makes it easy for users and crawlers to find their way around, which improves your website’s search engine optimization (SEO) score.

Your website’s architecture is defined by its hierarchical page structure. Through internal connections, this structure is represented. The way your website is set up should make it easy for people to find information and help search engine spiders figure out how pages relate to each other.

Website Hierarchy

Competitor keywords

Competitor keywords are terms that your competitors are currently seeking to improve their search engine rankings and increase website traffic. Targeting rival keywords enables you to show up on the same SERPs (search engine results pages) as your competitors.

Content

Web content refers to the literary, auditory, or visual content published on a website. Content is any creative element, like text, software, photos, archived e-mail messages, data, e-services, audio and video files, and so on. Web content is the secret to traffic growth for websites. Also, it’s important to make sure that the online content is optimized for search engines so that it works with the search terms.

SEO Strategies (on-page and off-page)

On-page SEO focuses on making a website that is appealing to users and, in turn, search engines. Off-page SEO, on the other hand, focuses on getting people to know about a website and giving its content trust and authority.

On-page SEO refers to SEO factors and techniques that focus on optimizing aspects of your website over which you have direct control. On-page SEO includes most of the “basic” parts of search engine optimization, like keywords, HTML tags, page titles, and making sure your site works well on mobile devices.

Off-page SEO refers to SEO factors and strategies that focus on promoting your website or brand elsewhere on the Internet. Off-page SEO is the collection of strategies, tactics, and efforts you employ to promote your content on third-party websites throughout the Internet. This part of SEO is all about getting your website, business, or brand mentioned on other websites.

‍Get the fastest SEO results with Abstrax Web.

At Abstrax Web, we offer premium services that give your company sustainable and the fastest seo results. We know what’s working and what’s not thanks to our advanced data analytics, which you will also have access to in real time. We’ll make the necessary changes to improve the results and make sure you’re getting your money’s worth.

Conclusion

SEO enables you to be the solution to potential consumers’ questions. In addition to increasing your exposure and traffic, SEO helps you establish yourself as an authority in your sector. The association between authority and brand trust ultimately results in brand loyalty.

Website Hierarchy
Categories search engine optimization

What Is Website Hierarchy?

No one fancies the idea of feeling lost when they visit a website. Consider visiting a library to research wildlife, but the books aren’t structured accordingly. So, you painstakingly sieve through each shelf, looking for the book you need. Eventually, you’d get tired and give up on your quest. But most likely, you’d visit another library to find what you need.

It’s the same thing with websites. Without a website hierarchy, your visitors will be lost. In fact, nearly one in two visitors leave after landing on a cluttered website. Because, let’s face it, who would want to spend minutes searching for a particular content when millions of other websites are waiting to be explored.

Website hierarchy can be defined as the architectural structure of your website pages. You can easily see it reflected in how each part of the website is interlinked. The website hierarchy design aims to help visitors navigate seamlessly to different parts of your website.

It also helps search engine bots to crawl through and understand how different pages within the website connect.

This article explores everything about hierarchy web design, its importance, and how to structure one for your website.

How Does Website Hierarchy Work?

People who land on your website want to understand what it’s all about within the first 10 seconds. Thus, they’d look for the top-level navigation to identify different website sections and how to locate them.

If there isn’t any website menu for navigating between pages, the website will look unstructured to any visitor, and they might leave.

The website design hierarchy ensures visitors can locate different website sections without stress.

Types of Website Hierarchy

Hierarchy web design comes in two different types. These types are peculiar for various reasons and serve different purposes. They include:

● Flat site hierarchy website design.

● Deep site hierarchy website design.

We explore them below:

Flat Site Hierarchy

A flat site hierarchy website design is a hierarchical website structure in which different web pages are a click away from the main page. This hierarchy web design makes it easier for users to navigate different sections of the website.

Take the above website, for example. If someone wants to read more information about sci-fi books, they must click on the Books section at the top of the website. It will lead them directly to what they’re looking for.

It’s the same idea if they want to read up on Sci-fi TV shows, they’d click on the TV section. A flat site navigational hierarchy design ensures visitors get what they need within a few clicks.

Deep Site Hierarchy

Deep site hierarchical website structure creates different website sections under various categories and topics. It is visually created using a triangle or tree setup. In this website design hierarchy, there are top-level navigation and sub-level categories.

Take a look at the example above. When you click on Lifestyle on The Washington Post, it reveals subsections such as Advice, Relationship, Travel, Fashion, and others. Thus, visitors who want to learn about lifestyle news will have to narrow their search into one of those subcategories to access different content.

While visitors might take a longer time to discover content, this website organization is beneficial for viewing content by categories and topics.

Why Hierarchy Is So Important in Web Design

Website hierarchy goes a long way to strengthen your digital marketing. How? We look at the reasons below:

Google Understands Your Site Better

Website hierarchy design gives Google’s bots an idea of what your website is about. Thus, they’d be able to crawl through and index your web pages seamlessly. Thus, when people search for content using targeted keywords, Google will be able to present your web pages to them.

Without a website design hierarchy, Google won’t be able to crawl through your site, risking visibility during organic searches.

Fosters Smooth User Experience

Website hierarchy ensures excellent user experience, as visitors will be able to locate the content they want to interact with. On the plus side, they’d spend more time on your website, increasing your website sessions.

When visitors spend more time on your website, Google sees it as good and will rank it above other web pages belonging to your competitors.

Prevents Your Website From Competing With Itself

If you have different content centered on the same topic, a hierarchical website structure will reveal to Google which page is the most important. Website hierarchy techniques such as interlinking and taxonomy prevent your web pages from competing against themselves.

Gets You Sitemaps Easily

Sitemap levels on SERPs typically showcase your website’s most important pages. They are essential to getting you more clickthrough rates and improving your website rankings on SERPs.

What Elements Should Be Included in Site Hierarchy?

When incorporating website hierarchy design, there are essential elements to be added. These elements include the most important pages to increase web traffic and drive leads. These visual elements give users an idea of what your website is about.

For instance, if you’re running an eCommerce clothing website, the elements should include:

● Homepage

● Women’s clothing

● Kids clothing

● Men’s clothing

● Blog

● Contact us

See the example below:

Ecommerce Site Hierarchy

If you’re running a website that offers services to people, the elements should include:

● Homepage

● Services 1

● Services 2

● Services 3

● Services 4

● Contact us

See example below:

Services Site Hierarchy

These examples reveal different levels of website navigation, allowing visitors to locate content quickly.

How to Create a Website Hierarchy

To create a website menu for navigating between pages, you need to practice these tips:

Create a Simple Top-Level Navigation

On your homepage, you need to create a simple navigation menu. Too many top-level navigation menus might throw your visitors off.

You need to also provide genuine content based on the menu name. When users click on Blog on your website, they should be directed to the blog section containing your articles, not something else.

Add Sub-Menus to Your Site Hierarchy

In addition to the top-level navigation, you should create sub-menus if necessary. For instance, if you run an eCommerce clothing website, you can make sub-menus under top menus.

These sub-menus might include:

● Sweaters

● Sweatpants

● Sweatshirts

● Pants

● Polo shirts

● T-shirts

● Accessories, etc.

These sub-menus can fall under top menus like Men’s Clothing, Women’s Clothing, and Kids’ Clothing.

Keep Your URLs Simple

Creating user-friendly URLs for different parts of your website is essential. Content management systems like WordPress and CMS Hub automatically create a user-friendly URL based on the content title.

Your categories, directories, and sub-directories should have simple and user-friendly URLs. It should look like this:

example.com/blog/

Instead of example.com/default.aspx?lang=en&category=98a20

Keep Your Website Consistent

Your website navigational hierarchy should be consistent throughout the entire website. This includes the web design, link displays, and website theme.

When these visual designs are consistent, visitors might remain on the site longer, and that’s a good thing.

Use Breadcrumbs

Some of the best website navigation structures implement breadcrumbs to enhance their website architecture. Breadcrumbs reveal a current page all the way to the homepage.

Creating breadcrumbs for your website enhances its structure and appeal for your visitors.

Website Hierarchy Examples

Below are some of the common examples of website hierarchy designs:

Conclusion

Website hierarchy is an essential aspect of your digital marketing. With these tips and examples outlined, you can incorporate it on your website and thrive digitally.