What Is Website Architecture and Why Is It Important to My Contractor Business?
Website architecture feels like the type of term you’d hear in the building industry, not the marketing industry. But both types of architecture are more alike than you think.
‘Website architecture’ is just a fancy way of describing how your site is organized. If you’re building a contractor site from scratch you’ll need to organise it so people can find it through Google and browse it without trouble. Tick those boxes and your website architecture will be sorted.
Website architecture refers to the way your site is structured and how easy it is for people and Google to find your content.
The term ‘website architecture’ can feel overly technical and bring up the image of a nerdy web developer hunched over a computer in a dark room, but if you’re building your own tradesman site from scratch you’re in control of your site’s architecture as much as anybody.
The first step to unlock good site architecture is to be able to define what website architecture is.
Once you’re confident in what makes for good architecture you’ll be able to keep an eye out for any poor site architecture decisions that are hurting your chances of getting new leads and boosting your rankings.
The two crucial features of website architecture are:
- Making it easy for people to browse your site and find your content
- Making it easy for Google find and rank your pages
Let’s start with making it easy for people and talk about the way your pages are assembled on your website.
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What is good website architecture?
Good site architecture is like good house architecture. Each room should naturally flow to the next
Your home improvement website should be built in a way that makes it easy for people to know what they’re doing on each page, and where they should go next.
You wouldn’t build a house that has hallways leading to nowhere or detached rooms with no doors to let people in. A house needs to be thought out long before the concrete slab is poured and the walls go up. With planning you can make sure the rooms of a house are in the right spot and that it’s easy for the homeowner to move around on their own terms.
Your website needs the same thought-out process before a single page is built or line of code is written.
- Step #1 – Keywords for each page
- Step #2 – Map out how each page will connect
- Step #3 – Create internal links between each page
- Step #4 – Set up title tags and URLs to boost SEO
Here’s a quick breakdown of why these factors can make or break your site architecture.
How keywords impact website architecture
Sick of hearing about keywords yet? Here’s all you need to know as a trade business owner
When it comes to SEO, every man and his dog has been hammered with the topic of keywords.
It’s true they’re important, but you don’t need to sign up to night school to learn how to make sense of them. Here’s the simple way to approach keywords…
- How many services do you provide?
- What budget do you have for your website?
- What volume are the keywords you’re targeting?
“Why does the number of services matter?”
You’ll want to target a range of keywords relating to each service you offer. If you lay synthetic lawn but you don’t have any content related to laying synthetic lawn, then how will people find you? (answer = they won’t).
So you’ll need content on each service you provide, and among that content you’ll be using your target keywords.
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“Why does budget matter, isn’t creating content free?”
You’re 100% right.
If you create all the content yourself, it won’t cost you a thing (apart from hours of your time). But if you hire an agency for you then you’ll need a budget to cover the cost of creating more content.
The more content you have, the more keywords you can target.
Remember, each page on your site isn’t targeting just ONE keyword.
A single page on your trade website can rank for hundreds of keywords if the content is long enough and well-written. Let’s say you pressure wash concrete driveways. A page on ‘How to save money on your next driveway pressure wash’ could end up ranking for:
- ‘How to save money on pressure wash’
- ‘Save money driveway pressure wash’
- ‘Cheap driveway pressure washing’
- ‘Affordable driveway pressure wash near me’
You get the idea. The more content you have, the more keywords you target.
That’s good website architecture 101.
“Why does keyword volume matter?”
Not every keyword is searched the same number of times.
People search for ‘Bathroom Renovations Sydney’ more than they search for ‘Bathroom Renovations Bondi’. More people live in Sydney as a city than Bondi as a suburb, so there are more people searching for the larger area.
Not that it all comes down to population sizes. The demand for each service also varies, so you’ll see more people searching for ‘roof painters’ and less for ‘letterbox painters’.
There might be some businesses who do great letterbox painting, but it’s a niche service that isn’t going to be searched often, and the amount of searches per month is known as the ‘volume’.
Good site architecture is built around keywords with the right search volume
The keywords you target should be being punched into Google enough to bring you site traffic, and capture leads.
You’ll need a variety of keyword volumes to make this happen.
If you only target the super-popular keywords you’ll be facing super-high levels of competition. In contrast, lower volume keywords are searched less often, but come with less competition. A mixture of both is where good site architecture starts.
Once you’ve found the keywords to create your website on, you’ll need to map out how they’ll appear on each page.
Map out how each page will connect to your website architecture
Whether you’re building a site yourself or hiring an agency, if you’re starting from scratch, you’ve got a HUGE advantage.
Building from the ground up puts you in a great position to organize your contractor site around specific keywords.
Your competition (who didn’t come to their new website with a plan) can rank for the odd keyword here and there. While every page on YOUR site is designed to rank for specific keywords likely to bring you monthly traffic (which turns into leads and customers).
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Mapping out your website architecture doesn’t have to be confusing though, in fact keeping things simple is the key to great site architecture. Here’s how you keep things simple:
- Each main service should have a unique page
- Each sub-service page should relate to the main category it’s under
So if you run a tree lopping business you might have a main service page for ‘Tree Lopping’ with three sub-services for ‘Tree Removal’, ‘Tree Care’ and ‘Arboriculturalist Services’.
The main service page, ‘Tree Lopping’ would be easy to find in your website’s menu, with drop down options for your three sub-service pages. And site visitors on any of those pages would be able to move between them through easy to find internal links – which we’ll cover now.
Because creating your pages around the right keywords won’t help your SEO unless you link them together with internal links.
Create internal links between each page in your website architecture
“Why are internal links between pages so important, can’t my site visitors find their own way?”
Think of it this way…
You could walk into a hardware store and you’d probably find what you’re looking for eventually. But it’s always easier to reach your destination when there are signs hanging above each aisle telling you what you’ll find.
Your site visitors could find their way from page to page, but a lack of clear internal links can frustrate people and if your competition has a website that is easier to use, people will gladly jump ship.
The goal of your internal links (as well as your website menus) is to get people to reach any page on your website in 4 clicks or less. If you’re a plumber and it takes 5, 10 or 15 clicks to find your page on ‘Emergency Pipe Repair’ do you think people will be willing to stick around?
Not likely.
Internal links are also crucial to help people find the page they’re looking for if they’ve found your tradie website on Google. Let’s say you’re a tiler from London ranking for ‘Tile Removal’ which is where someone found you, but that site visitor is actually looking for ‘Surface Preparation’.
A website with clear internal links can help people quickly jump to the correct service, whereas a website without a clear internal linking strategy will make people think “forget this, I can’t find what I’m looking for, I’ll go back to Google and try again”.
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Set up metadata and URLs in your website architecture
Finally, you’ll need to optimize your site. Which is code for “make it easy for people to find and use”.
‘Optimize’ is one of the most overused buzzwords in marketing, when it’s just code for ‘simplify’.
Once you’ve got your keywords, mapped them into pages, and decided how to link each page, you’ll need to ‘simplify’ your home improvement site.
And what’s simpler for your customers than seeing keywords in your Page Titles?
If you were searching for a way to build a new site and Googled ‘website builder’, a result like this makes it easy to find and click.
Think about the last search you made on Google as an example. Of all the results, the most enticing ones are those that reflect your own keywords back at you. Let’s say you searched for ‘how to build a website’. Which result are you more likely to click on…
- How To Build a Website in 60 Minutes | Step By Step Guide
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The first result uses your keywords, so you know the content will be on point. The second result looks like a blog headline, but even then it’s confusing and vague.
As well as Meta Titles and Meta Descriptions, you’ll need to optimize your:
- URLs
- Headers
- Sub-Headlines
Once again, good site architecture keeps things simple and puts your keywords in Page Titles, URLs and Headers so potential customers can always see the page they’re heading to is the right one.
How website architecture helps your customers
Forget the technical benefits of creating a clear website architecture.
Site architecture is all about making life easy for your customers.
Trust is the currency of the internet, and when your site visitors see how easy you make things for them – whether that’s making it easy to click through your site or content that easily solves their problems, they’ll trust you with their business.
“What website architecture considerations does Google have?”
We didn’t talk about how site architecture helps Google. And we’re not going to.
We only covered the way site architecture makes it easy for people to find you and move around your site. And we didn’t mention how site architecture makes it easy for Google to find and rank you.
That’s because if you get the first part right, the second part follows.
SEO doesn’t have to be complex. Always put your customers first – that means building a website that’s easy to browse and helps people solve their problems. Google prefers to rank sites that are full of helpful, keyword-rich content and clear internal links.
So when you create a contractor site that’s easy to use and built around relevant keywords, SEO results will follow.
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