How to optimize your blog’s site structure easily?

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Knowing how to optimize your blog’s site structure is critical for creating a blog that is appealing, easy to navigate, and has a higher chance of ranking on search engines.

This means that a good, organized site structure has a direct impact on user experience (UX) and SEO.

Therefore, creating a well-structured blog site is a must for:

• Ensuring visitors can easily access the content they’re looking for
• Helping search engines understand your content and index it

This blog post will look at what goes into creating a well-structured blog site.

We’ll learn how to choose the right post categories and tags, structure them, and create an intuitive navigation system.

By the end of this post, you’ll be well-versed in how to optimize your blog’s site structure and be able to create a blog site that your visitors will love.

So, let’s get started.

What is a blog site structure?

Building a blog is similar to building an airport.

The more organized it is, the happier the travelers will be, and the easier their path to the plane.

Everything in the airport is put in its proper place (apparently).

Your journey starts at the entrance, and you move forward in step-by-step procedures until you are in the gate area and then on the plane.

Your blog should be organized the same way in order to lead your visitors to their destination.

That’s it.

Blog site structure refers to how a blog is organized: how its content is divided, how its navigation is arranged, and how its different elements are connected.

The structure of a blog site determines how users interact with the site and how easy it is for them to find what they’re looking for.

A well-structured site makes it easier for visitors to find content quickly and encourages them to explore more of the site. This will undoubtedly improve the user experience, which helps boost engagement, ranking, and revenue.

How important is optimizing blog site structure?

Optimizing your blog’s site structure is crucial for creating an effective and successful blog. It helps ensure that visitors can find the content they’re looking for easily and quickly.

What’s the benefit of writing all your blog posts if nobody can see them?

It also helps your blog look professional, which in turn increases the chances of visitors recommending your site to others.

Everyone had a bad feeling looking at an unorganized, ugly site and bounced to another site. It might have included really valuable content, but we couldn’t bear spending more time exploring it.

This happens when the site owner fails to make his site easy to navigate, leading to frustration.

Furthermore, optimizing your blog’s site structure can also help search engine bots crawl and index your pages more easily, improving your blog’s visibility and organic search rankings.

In short, optimizing your blog’s site structure is essential for the success of your blog and should not be overlooked.

What are the elements of a site structure?  

The basic elements of a blog’s site structure include navigation, content organization, hierarchy, and linking.

1. Navigation is the way users move between different areas of the blog.
2.  Content organization refers to how the content is divided and organized on the blog.
3. Hierarchy is the order in which content is displayed.
4. linking refers to how different elements of the blog are connected, including internal and external links. 

Optimizing these elements can improve the user experience on your blog, making it easier for visitors to find the content they’re looking for and encouraging them to explore more of the site.

How to optimize your blog’s site structure.

Before we dive deep into the optimization process, it is important to say that building and optimizing a blog site structure should not be the same process for all bloggers.

I am not going to tell you, for instance, what to include in your menu or what categories to choose, but we are going to know what elements should exist and how to optimize them.

Create an easy-to-navigate menu

Your menu is the entrance gate to your blog, so it’s better to install direction signs to lead visitors to their destination.

Have you ever desperately looked for a WC in a mall and luckily found the sign? (That’s how important it is to tell people where to go and what to expect.)

Creating a menu is an essential step in creating a navigable blog. It gives readers an easy way to navigate your blog, allowing them to find the content they are most interested in. This can greatly improve the overall user experience.

Keep in mind that User Experience is a ranking factor.

When creating a menu for your blog, it’s important to include items that are relevant and useful to your readers. 

Every blogger should consider creating the main pages and including them in the menu.

Must-have pages on your blog

• About us page
• Contact us page
• Disclaimer page
• Terms and conditions
• Blog

These pages are important for the readers to know about you and to contact you if needed.

They are also mandatory when applying to Google AdSense or other ad management companies.

You can also include more specific categories based on your blog’s content like including

 a search bar or other interactive features.

Having an effective menu will help visitors quickly find the content they are looking for. This can keep them on your blog for longer and encourage them to explore more of what you offer. It can also help your blog stand out from the competition by providing a better user experience.

Overall, creating a menu for your blog is an important way of ensuring that readers are able to find the content they are looking for and even read posts that they didn’t know existed.

Including relevant categories and interactive features ensures that your blog stands out and provides an enjoyable user experience.

Create relevant categories

If you want to optimize your blog’s site structure for SEO and UX, you need to organize your content into categories. This can be incredibly beneficial for your blog.

It helps organize your content and adds structure to your blog by making it easier for search engines and people to find.

When creating categories, you should consider the topics you’d like to focus on. My categories, for example, are blogging, blogging tips, email marketing, and artificial intelligence.

This helps to keep your content consistent and focused, as well as provides readers with an easier way to find content about these topics.

Additionally, it’s important to consider whether or not you’d like to create subcategories. Subcategories can help readers find content specific to their needs and interests.

For instance, I can create a subcategory and name it “blogging for beginners” under the main category “blogging.”

When you’ve established the categories and subcategories, you can begin to add content to them. It would be helpful to include an introduction for each category and subcategory that outlines the types of content that can be found there.

Furthermore, be sure to properly organize the content by date so that the most recent content is always easy to find.

Read More>> Blog post checklist-how to optimize your blog posts

Create tags

Tags are an important part of any blog post, but their presence is optional. They are not critical to SEO, but they help to categorize content, allowing readers to easily find the posts they’re looking for and helping search engines understand your content easily.

A blog post should always have relevant tags that accurately describe the post’s topic.

When writing a blog post, it’s a good idea to think of the keywords that relate to the topic and use those words as tags. For example, if your post is about the benefits of online education, you could use tags such as “online learning,” and, “education.”

Doing so will make your post easier to find and categorize, giving it a higher chance of getting noticed by readers.

Creating categories and tags is a simple process if you are using the Yoast plugin; all you have to do is choose from the existing categories or create your own.

Then go down to the tags section and write your tags; that’s it.

Write a cornerstone post

A cornerstone post is a long-form content article that provides comprehensive coverage of a particular topic. It is a well-researched guide to a specific topic that should be broken up into sections and structured to provide valuable content in an easy-to-read way.

It is designed to be an authoritative source on a given subject and is often used as a reference for other content related to the topic. Cornerstone posts are often used to establish authority in a particular niche or industry.

My cornerstone post is about SEO. It is a 5,500-word post that answers most SEO questions to help readers understand acronyms, expressions, and more.

The 77 most asked questions about SEO

In other words, it is your masterpiece that should be (theoretically) linked from and to all posts.

Having a cornerstone post on your website is critical for SEO success because it will help you rank higher in search engine results. It’s also a great way to establish yourself as an authority on the subject and gain more visibility for your website.

Additionally, a cornerstone post will help you build relationships with other websites and blogs. This happens when you use it as proof of your expertise in the subject.

For instance, if you want to guest blog on someone’s site, you need to show him how valuable your content is, by sending a link to your cornerstone.

Finally, cornerstone posts can help you generate leads and conversions. Providing valuable content to your readers can encourage them to take further action, such as subscribing to your newsletter, downloading a free guide, or making a purchase.

Pagination

Suppose that you have 100 posts on your blog. How would you like your readers to find what they’re looking for?

Do you want them to infinitely scroll down?

What if they want to read older posts?

Do you think they’ll continue searching? or, alternatively, bounce to another site (a competitor’s).

To solve this issue, you need to make this process as easy as possible; otherwise, your older posts will sleep in the dark.

Believe me, even tiny issues may badly affect your bounce rate and dwell time.

Read More>> What do we mean by dwell time and bounce rate

How to do this? Through pagination.

Pagination is the act of dividing your content into separate pages.

When you have a big number of posts, you don’t want to display them on a single page. This will frustrate your readers as they endlessly scroll through this page.

You’d rather break the number up and spread it.

To use pagination correctly, you first need to determine the size of the content you want to paginate. You can then add a suitable number of pages.

I use 10 posts per page, and once this number is exceeded, it automatically adds a new page.

Look at this image from my blog:

This will help my readers navigate easily and jump quickly between pages.

Many themes, like the one I use, automatically paginate content, but it can also be done by adjusting PHP or CSS codes. (Don’t ask me how because I’m not good at this.)

Use breadcrumbs

Breadcrumbs are another type of navigation system used on websites to help visitors find their way around.

They are typically a list of “links,” mostly displayed at the top or bottom of a page, that show the user which pages they have already visited and the location they are currently in within the website.

Look at this example:

Breadcrumbs allow users to easily go back to pages they have previously visited by simply clicking the link.

They are particularly useful for long or complex websites with multiple levels, like e-commerce sites. 

Have a look at this:

As you can see, users can easily navigate from the previous page back to the home page without having to search for it.

Breadcrumbs are also helpful for visitors who may visit a page from an external link and want to explore the rest of the website. This will reduce your bounce rate and keep your visitors hooked on your website for as long as possible.

Read More>> How to add breadcrumbs to your WordPress

Read More>> 9 ways to keep your readers hooked to your blog

Create a sitemap

A sitemap is a map file that provides the structure of a website and is used by search engines to help them understand what content is available and how to access it.

It is also used to notify search engines of changes to the site and submit new content for indexing.

Creating a sitemap is a simple process that doesn’t take much time. If you use Yoast on your WordPress site, the process will be automated. Whenever you publish a post, the plugin will generate an XML file and submit it to search engines to quickly index it.

Internal Linking

Internal linking is one of the best methods for growing your blog.

Google and other search engines send their spider bots to discover your blog. These bots navigate from one page to another by following links within the pages.

If you leave any page without links, it will then be considered an orphaned page. (Don’t cry, it’s just a page.)

Having orphaned pages will make it harder for search engines to reach them and, as a result, to index them.

Internal links are great when it comes to keeping your readers on your blog for a long time. This is because they’ll keep clicking on different links that will lead them to other posts or pages. 

This will reduce the bounce rate and increase the impressions and clicks, resulting in better page performance and more blog growth.

Despite their positive role in both SEO and the user experience, you should not overuse links in your posts.

Do not stuff.

If you want to learn how to implement internal linking the correct way, read this post.