What's a preferred site structure?

Google Search Central · Intermediate ·📰 AI News & Updates ·17y ago

Key Takeaways

Google software engineer Matt Cutts discusses the importance of site structure for human visitors, emphasizing the need for key content to be easily accessible, regardless of its position in the site's hierarchy.

Full Transcript

here's a question from London Katie barsto asks there seems to be little impact on human visitors where in the site structure given page is so is it better to keep key content Pages close to the root or have them deep within a topical funnel structure well this is not SEO advice this is just behavioral advice um if you can have stuff you know fewer number of clicks from the root page visitors are more likely to find it if somebody has to click eight times to find the page to register for your conference compared to Reg right on the main root page fewer people are going to find it if it's all that many clicks away so it doesn't really matter where it is in the path like is it at the root level or is it eight levels deep it might matter for other search engines but at least for Google I would think more about you know can your visitors find it and that's not search engine ranking advice that's just general advice on how to improve your Roi

Original Description

On February 26, 2009, Google software engineer Matt Cutts collected questions on Google Moderator and answered many of them on video. Katy Bairstow from London asked: There seems to be little impact on human visitors where in the site's structure a given page is, so: Is it better to keep key content pages close to root, or have them deep within a topical funnel-structure, e.g.: food/fast-food/burgers/hamburgers.php
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Google software engineer Matt Cutts advises keeping key content close to the root page to improve user experience and Roi, regardless of its impact on search engine rankings.

Key Takeaways
  1. Keep key content close to the root page
  2. Use a topical funnel structure to organize content
  3. Prioritize user experience over search engine ranking
  4. Test and measure the impact of site structure on Roi
💡 The position of key content in a site's hierarchy has little impact on human visitors, but can affect search engine rankings.

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