The navigation of a website is important in helping visitors quickly find the content they want. It can also help search engines understand what content the website owner thinks is important. Although Google's search results are provided at a page level, Google also likes to have a sense of what role a page plays in the bigger picture of the site.
Example of a useful page hierarchy for a website.
Plan your navigation based on your homepage
All sites have a home or root page, which is usually the most frequented page on the site and the starting place of navigation for many visitors. Unless your site has only a handful of pages, think about how visitors will go from a general page (your root page) to a page containing more specific content. Do you have enough pages around a specific topic area that it would make sense to create a page describing these related pages (for example, root page -> related topic listing -> specific topic)? Do you have hundreds of different products that need to be classified under multiple category and subcategory pages?
A breadcrumb is a row of internal links at the top or bottom of the page that allows visitors to quickly navigate back to a previous section or the root page. Many breadcrumbs have the most general page (usually the root page) as the first, leftmost link and list the more specific sections out to the right. We recommend using breadcrumb structured data markup when showing breadcrumbs.
Website with a breadcrumb list showing the current page hierarchy.
Create a simple navigational page for users
A navigational page is a simple page on your site that displays the structure of your website, and usually consists of a hierarchical listing of the pages on your site. Visitors may visit this page if they are having problems finding pages on your site. While search engines will also visit this page, getting good crawl coverage of the pages on your site, it's mainly aimed at human visitors.
Make it as easy as possible for users to go from general content to the more specific content they want on your site. Add navigation pages when it makes sense and effectively work these into your internal link structure. Make sure all of the pages on your site are reachable through links, and that they don't require an internal search functionality to be found. Link to related pages, where appropriate, to allow users to discover similar content.
Creating complex webs of navigation links, for example, linking every page on your site to every other page.
Going overboard with slicing and dicing your content (so that it takes twenty clicks to reach from the homepage).
Use text for navigation
Controlling most of the navigation from page to page on your site through text links makes it easier for search engines to crawl and understand your site. When using JavaScript to create a page, use a elements with URLs as href attribute values, and generate all menu items on page-load, instead of waiting for a user interaction.
Having a navigation based entirely on images, or animations.
Create a navigational page for users, a sitemap for search engines
Include a simple navigational page for your entire site (or the most important pages, if you have hundreds or thousands) for users. Create an XML sitemap file to ensure that search engines discover the new and updated pages on your site, listing all relevant URLs together with their primary content's last modified dates.
Users will occasionally come to a page that doesn't exist on your site, either by following a broken link or typing in the wrong URL. Having a custom 404 page that kindly guides users back to a working page on your site can greatly improve a user's experience. Consider including a link back to your root page and providing links to popular or related content on your site. You can use Google Search Console to find the sources of URLs causing "not found" errors.
Allowing your 404 pages to be indexed in search engines (make sure that your web server is configured to give a 404 HTTP status code or—in the case of JavaScript-based sites—include the noindex tag when non-existent pages are requested).
Blocking 404 pages from being crawled through the robots.txt file.
Providing only a vague message like "Not found", "404", or no 404 page at all.
Using a design for your 404 pages that isn't consistent with the rest of your site.
Simple URLs convey content information
Creating descriptive categories and filenames for the documents on your website not only helps you keep your site better organized, it can create easier, friendlier URLs for those that want to link to your content. Visitors may be intimidated by extremely long and cryptic URLs that contain few recognizable words.
URLs like the following can be confusing and unfriendly:
Lastly, remember that the URL to a document is usually displayed in some form in a Google Search result near the document title.
Google is good at crawling all types of URL structures, even if they're quite complex, but spending the time to make your URLs as simple as possible is a good practice.
URLs with words that are relevant to your site's content and structure are friendlier for visitors navigating your site.
Using lengthy URLs with unnecessary parameters and session IDs.
Choosing generic page names like page1.html.
Using excessive keywords like baseball-cards-baseball-cards-baseballcards.html.
Create a simple directory structure
Use a directory structure that organizes your content well and makes it easy for visitors to know where they're at on your site. Try using your directory structure to indicate the type of content found at that URL.
Freelance PPC Expert In DelhiHaving deep nesting of subdirectories like .../dir1/dir2/dir3/dir4/dir5/dir6/page.html.
Using directory names that have no relation to the content in them.
Provide one version of a URL to reach a document
To prevent users from linking to one version of a URL and others linking to a different version (this could split the reputation of that content between the URLs), focus on using and referring to one URL in the structure and internal linking of your pages. If you do find that people are accessing the same content through multiple URLs, setting up a 301 redirect from non-preferred URLs to the dominant URL is a good solution for this. If you cannot redirect, you may also use the rel="canonical" link element.
Creating compelling and useful content will likely influence your website more than any of the other factors discussed here. Users know good content when they see it and will likely want to direct other users to it. This could be through blog posts, social media services, email, forums, or other means.
Organic or word-of-mouth buzz is what helps build your site's reputation with both users and Google, and it rarely comes without quality content.
Creating interesting new content can generate links from other websites.
Know what your readers want (and give it to them)
Think about the words that a user might search for to find a piece of your content. Users who know a lot about the topic might use different keywords in their search queries than someone who is new to the topic. For example, a long-time football fan might search for "fifa", an acronym for the Fédération Internationale de Football Association, while a new fan might use a more general query like "football playoffs". Anticipating these differences in search behavior and accounting for them while writing your content (using a good mix of keyword phrases) could produce positive results. Google Ads provides a handy Keyword Planner that helps you discover new keyword variations and see the approximate search volume for each keyword. Also, Google Search Console provides you with the top search queries your site appears for and the ones that led the most users to your site in the Performance Report.
Consider creating a new, useful service that no other site offers. You could also write an original piece of research, break an exciting news story, or leverage your unique user base. Other sites may lack the resources or expertise to do these things.
Write easy-to-read text
Users enjoy content that is well written and easy to follow.
Writing sloppy text with many spelling and grammatical mistakes.
Awkward or poorly written content.
Embedding text in images and videos for textual content: users may want to copy and paste the text and search engines can't read it.
Organize your topics clearly
It's always beneficial to organize your content so that visitors have a good sense of where one content topic begins and another ends. Breaking your content up into logical chunks or divisions helps users find the content they want faster.
Dumping large amounts of text on varying topics onto a page without paragraph, subheading, or layout separation.
Create fresh, unique content
New content will not only keep your existing visitor base coming back, but also bring in new visitors.
Rehashing (or even copying) existing content that will bring little extra value to users.
Having duplicate or near-duplicate versions of your content across your site.
Learn more about duplicate content.
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