UX and SEO: website information architecture
Usability and UX design are integral components of SEO. Moreover, SEO and UX go hand in hand and can significantly impact a company’s profits, reputation, and customers.
Website information architecture is one of the important things in UX design and SEO. Unfortunately many website owners and digital marketers ignore this step at the Discovery phase of the web project.
Basics
Why SEO and UX design have become so important for business success?
SEO or search engine optimization is about optimizing a page and making it easier for the search engine to recognize and appropriately position the page. UX or user experience is about providing every page visitor with good content and an excellent overall experience. The goal of SEO is to win the actual click on the search engine result page. The goal of UX is to engage website visitors. Both SEO and UX focus on giving users a satisfying answer to their questions.
UX design impacts your site SEO. If you improve UX design, you can win at SEO.
You can learn more about basic ways to improve your website’s User Experience but in this article, we focus on the information architecture of a website.
What is website information architecture?
Website information architecture is organization, structure, and nomenclature that define the relationships between a site’s content/functionality.
Website information architecture is documented in spreadsheets and diagrams, not in wireframes. It describes the different content pieces on the site and the relationship between them. So, in a way, information architecture design is a foundation of UX.
Usually, users don’t see the structure of the website, but they may get the feeling that content is divided up and connected in ways that match their needs and expectations. When content/functionality is not what visitors wanted they leave sites because of poor organization and structure. As you probably guess, search engines act similarly when understanding the context and how to rank it among similar results. You cannot launch a website and publish content without taking bots, or more general search engines, into account.
These things can help to website information architecture successful:
- User goals. What are your users or audience there to do?
- Business goals. What would you like your users or audience to do?
- Search engine optimization (SEO). What pages resonate with search queries so you can connect users to the right information?
All right. How to create a website information architecture that will help to win at SEO?
How to create a website information architecture for a new site
The process of designing website information architecture has to be part of the discovery phase of a web project. Even if you want to redesign or refresh your site, do not ignore this step.
Conduct customer research
This step aims to learn about a user’s needs. You must work with a customer profile and the results of customer and stakeholder interviews. The data revealed at this stage will allow you to create a user persona profile, list business requirements, and get an idea of what a user wants.
At the end of this stage, you’ll end up with a user profile and the consumer decision-making process that illustrate the way a user thinks and interacts with content.
Anyway, it is a significant step in UI/UX website design services and you can’t skip it.
Provide keyword research
This step aims to collect search queries that your customer can use to find your company, products, or services. There are many methods doing keyword research. You can read the article Keyword research for business owners to learn about the F5 Studio’s method of keyword research. Also, you can use popular keyword research tools.
Add these keywords to the spreadsheet. You don’t need to do deep research at this project stage.
Information grouping
This step aims to define user-centered relationships between content. You should classify content by using keywords.
To design the F5 Studio website information architecture we use the closed method of information grouping, with pre-designed categories. Because our team redesigned the agency’s website.
But you can use the open method of grouping information. Your team can categorize topics however they like and in the order that makes sense to them. This approach allows you to understand how the users think in terms of classification. Also, you can use the hybrid method, which unites elements of both types or starts with an open type, moving to the closed type to follow user logic.
Build a website information architecture hierarchy
Hierarchical shows the information hierarchy from main elements to their sub-categories. See, for instance, in this picture.
Sometimes a website information architecture hierarchy seems so obvious. Home page, category pages, sub-category pages. But you should put yourself in your customer’s shoes. Is it easy for your website visitor to understand information? Does this information architecture adequately accommodate the full scope of content and functionality of a site?
Your team can test your information architecture before UX designers start to create the UX and UI design of a website.
Note! Internal links also allow for building a website information hierarchy.
Taxonomy development
Definition of a standardized naming convention (controlled vocabulary) to apply to all site content. Your designers and the content team should understand which name for category or sub-category they should use, for instance, “Apple smartphones” or “iPhones”.
The next step is creating a UI prototype for future development and wireframing.
How to improve the information architecture of the existing site
If you want to improve the SEO performance of your exciting site, redesign or refresh your site, you can improve your website’s information architecture.
Conduct customer research
People don’t change, but their behavior, and needs can change.
Provide keyword research
You need to do it from time to time to improve your content. If you want to improve the information architecture of your site. For example, you can improve or change the naming of your categories.
Content inventory
This activity aims to identify existing site content and to create a list of information elements on all the pages of a website, like headings and subheadings, texts, media files, and links.
Content audit
When you have the content list, you can assess its usefulness, accuracy, tone of voice, and overall effectiveness. Then, scrap the least essential items, refresh outdated pieces of content, and rearrange them for the next steps. The updated list of keywords can help you to identify keyword gaps.
Now you can redesign your website information architecture.
Internal linking audit
The internal linking audit helps to find issues and opportunities to improve a website’s SEO and conversion rate. You can learn more about this method in The complete guide to using internal links for SEO article.
A few words about navigation
While website information architecture and website navigation are related and the information architecture informs website navigation design, these terms are not the same.
Navigation starts with website information architecture. But the primary goal of navigation is to help users find information/functionality and encourage them to take desirable actions.
A website’s navigation is a collection of user interface components. Navigation components include global navigation, local navigation, utility navigation, breadcrumbs, filters, facets, related links, footers, etc.
Usage Priority: How much will users rely on this navigation component?
Placement: On which pages should it be present? Where should it be placed within the page layout grid?
Pattern: Which navigation design patterns best support findability and discoverability — tabs, megamenus, carousels, accordions, and so on?
When designing a new site, UI designers must rely on a website information architecture to avoid mistakes.
When approaching a design or redesign project, it is important to take a look under the hood and start by defining or redefining the information architecture. The information architecture doesn’t need to be final before beginning to wireframe, but a first pass is necessary to get a handle on the volume and complexity of the content. Making navigation component choices based on looks alone can force you to change the website information architecture to something that doesn’t best serve users’ needs or accommodate your content.
Conclusions
Bad information architecture causes the majority of outright user failures. Also, it negatively impacts your website’s SEO performance.
If you invest a little in your site information architecture, it can make quite a difference. We hope this article will help you to improve your website, its SEO performance and to achieve your business goals.
