Website structure and navigation are a particularly important topic where your website is concerned. The structure refers to the way a standard HTML-only website works. If you consider the directory or what you may recognize as folders and files on your computer or mobile device, a server hosting web documents functions the same, and the pages are sorted within that directory structure, like a tree. The path to where any particular page is located in that directory structure is displayed in the address bar of your web browser. Dynamic websites, such as WordPress, do not store pages in that structure but rather produce the page that is defined as being assigned to that directory path.
The address to this post is as follows.
https://gapcreekmedia.com/content-marketing-management/website-structure-navigation/
So the directory path is the last part.
/content-marketing-management/website-structure-navigation/.
Form Follows Function
Now that we understand the technical structure of web pages, let's organize our content using that information. What are the primary things we need to offer our website visitors? Fortunately, we're going to cheat the test for you and answer that question. These are the most common primary pages small businesses will need. Check your own needs for completeness of the list. Pay attention to the Terms of Service and Privacy Policy pages as there may be regulatory burdens that need to be satisfied dependent on your industry, data collection practices, and particular purpose of the website.
- Home
- Path: example.com
- Blog
- Path: example.com/blog
- Services and/or Products
- Path: example.com/services
- Path: example.com/online-store
- About Us
- Path: example.com/about-us
- Contact Us
- Path: example.com/contact-us
The home page is typically the domain name with no path and all primary pages are "child" pages of the home page, and each of these child pages are "sibling" pages to each other. There are only parent, child, and sibling relationships in the path tree. For example, when we make a page for a specific service and make the sub-page of the Service called "Etching". Services is the parent page to the Etching page, and it is also true that the Etching page is a child page of the Services page.
Navigation
Your website navigation should make your website easy to navigate. Good structure and navigation are the opposite of trying to squeeze everything on the home page, then highlighting what you want people to notice with obnoxious, large, bright text. Instead of running off visitors, good navigation invites consumers to tour your website until they land on exactly what they were looking for or find something of interest. You have two sections to work with at all times, the header and footer, on every website page, and both should be used to facilitate navigation in a very different way.
Header
Your header navigation should be short and to the point or organized tightly into drop-down navigation elements so as not to take up too much space at the top of the website. Ideally, you've selected a theme or design elements that float the header down the page as the content is scrolled, so that navigating to another primary page is as easy as possible for the visitor.
Footer
The footer is an ideal place to lay out more in-depth navigation so that more of the website is exposed, including important child pages of your primary pages. Somewhere in the footer should also be a link to a page that serves as an overall sitemap for visitors, providing links to all the publicly available pages on the website. This often undeveloped part of many websites is lost SEO potential and a missed opportunity to provide customers with the best possible experience.
According to WordPress
I've provided a link directly to the relevant content to help you learn about this aspect of WordPress.
