Designing a site has never ever been this important as it is today. Years back, designing a site was very simple.
In the course of the dark ages of the internet, there were not many variations in respect to functionality or design.
Moreover, at that time even if the site took 5 minutes to load, there was no wiggle created among consumers for fancy graphics.
In most cases, you would publish a few contents & maybe a few clip art to give the site an additional spice.
Now, also the most elementary WordPress sites include dynamic images, countless WordPress plugins, and beautiful UX, which makes managing and publishing content easy.
In just a few decades, the digital space has become nearly unrecognizable to those who worked on AOL promo discs and Netscape in the 1990s.
While technologies and designs pioneered back then were of no utility for present-day’s WordPress sites, there is a basic pillar that still is true today, which is website structure.
With the correct WordPress site structure, one can have a good site that the users & Google both value.
Apply the retrospective principles in the contemporary world
In previous days of the web, the soul of one of the most successful websites rested on its structure.
Also today, without any logical visual, contextual and navigational structure, it does not matter the number of plugins or gimmicks that your website utilizes.
A weak site structure mostly guarantees extremely weak visitor responses. Thus, what does it actually mean for an average WordPress site? In the simplest of explanations, this means everything.
Do you remember those days when keyword density was factored in? It was when the search engines were dependent upon the number of times a particular keyword came upon the on-page content.
At the time, it appeared like the best way to simply connect the user queries with the most relevant sites.
However, this ended up endowing scammers with a bigger chunk of the digital profit pie.
It was not long before that the search results were scattered with the keyword-dense blog with actually no value.
For the internet, it was a pretty dark time. With the progress in technology, the ranking algorithms even progressed.
Though keywords stood a crucial SEO component, site structure & visitor engagement held the key to 1st-page rankings.
Luckily, a strong WordPress structure enabled website creators to simply avoid such spammy & useless ranking shortcuts.
How does the WordPress website structure impact SEO
Google got shifted into a website-level review model. It is a new ranking concept, which analyzes:
- Content quality
- User Experience designs
- Technical layout
- Visitor behavior
Definitely, topic authority and relevance are crucial even. However, what we see nowadays is an extremely strong preference towards WordPress sites having a smart structure that includes top-class website hosts, which makes sense from both an SEO point of view and for users.
Note, a website host can still be high quality and inexpensive. HostGator is an inexpensive choice that comes with several features involving newly ameliorated WordPress experience to secure socket certification.
Over the upcoming few years, expect the trend to become even stronger because Google processes its current findings.
Does it sound relatively straightforward, correct?
Well, because you might already know, there are times it is a seemingly simple concept that actually proves hardest to master.
Crucial WordPress structure & design elements
When it is about success on the internet, your website should satisfy best practices of on-page & off-page structure. Irrespective of a website’s purpose, industry, or audience, such components are universally crucial.
Here is a precise elaboration of what you require knowing:
Apply on page site structure tips
What is meant by on page? On page is only a shorthand reference to visual components of the site. It is what your consumers see as they communicate and engage on your website. Listed below are ways on how to structure a site:
- Create page by page design blueprint visually for consistency purpose. It is even called branding
- Integrate videos, images & graphics for further explaining webpage/website purpose & topic.
- Maintain a visual balance just by keeping spacing, paragraphs & numerous other on-page design components consistent.
- Select a navigation menu, which is informative and simplified both to prevent visitors from getting completely lost or not understanding as to what other topics/pages are available.
- Structure the webpages for the mobile first access, followed by the standard desktop screen.
- With a strong on-page site structure, your WordPress website will be friendly to users.
Apply off page site structure tips
Visual site structure is not the only player present in the game. Note that off page design even is impactful on the same level.
When mastering off page structure, here are some crucial tips you should follow:
- Check out all the external and internal links for confirming if they are working. Redirects and dead links not just hamper the experience of the site visitors, it even hurt one’s bottom line.
- Concentrate on designing a simple site organization, which even simplifies the process of forming a user-friendly menu.
- Continuously monitoring & improving the speed of page loading.
Note that Google usually puts a premium on the web pages that quickly load. Loading time of within 3 seconds should be your goal. Slower websites risk the SERPs penalty.
Utilize content delivery network to avail a faster global delivery of your site. In case you use a specific image on regular terms, image optimization is crucial.
Note that all the images must be optimized before uploading them to the website.
Use site-building system
Does this make your mind spin? If yes then you are not the only one. Most common reason that aspiring site owners often fail to understand dreams is not lack of desire, it is the absence of knowledge.
As off-page and on-page structure play a huge role in the search engine visibility, many generally assume it is not worth putting in their time till they become a web design professional.
It might be correct when you look for manually coding, designing, and laying out the site. But it is not even near to the only option.
Site builders are not new. Moreover, they are handy tools, which are nearly as old as the internet. Similar to the web, they have come a really long way right from the start.
From eCommerce stores to epic articles, site builders easily can simplify such complexities.
For the e-commerce store, security must even be a major component to structuring WordPress websites.
To make sure all the customer data/info are protected, certain security steps such as the addition of virtual private networks, must be factored in.
Look forward to using normal firewall protection and VPN services that function with all devices and platforms.
Such protections are common today and make sure all measures linked to website security are compatible with all the users.
Build a good WordPress website
There you have got it right. Though abridged, you might now be having an intense grip on what it actually takes to build and design a good site. So what exactly are you waiting for? Now is the time to get out and build something beautiful.
Sanjay Dey