One of the easiest ways to assess a site's structure is to look at the main menu and homepage, where the most important pages are often linked.
A website's structure affects how Google sees and crawls the site. It's important to understand how Google's crawler views your hierarchy for effective SEO.
Using Screaming Frog for Site Analysis
Screaming Frog's Free Version: For smaller websites with fewer than 500 URLs, the free version is sufficient.
Once you initiate a crawl, Screaming Frog displays various sections like Overview, Issues, and Site Structure on the right side.
The Site Structure tab shows how the site is broken down by page types such as Pages, CDN, Blogs, Products, and Checkouts.
Visualizing Crawl Depth
Crawl Tree Graph: This visual representation allows you to see how many clicks or crawls it takes to reach each page.
Crawl Depth refers to how many links or steps a page is from the homepage. Pages that are linked directly from the homepage are depth 1, and those that require more steps are deeper in the hierarchy.
This visualization is useful because pages that are deeper in the hierarchy can be harder for Google to crawl, which might impact their SEO.
Directory Tree Graph for Subfolder Insights
Subfolder View: The Directory Tree graph organizes pages by subfolders, showing how pages are grouped by category (such as products or blogs).
If your website has pages related to similar topics, it makes sense to organize them into subfolders (like “Industries” or “Services”) for clarity.
A clear structure like this not only helps users navigate your site but also helps search engines understand its content better.
Final Thoughts
Pages that are buried too deep in your site’s structure may not rank as well. Internal links can help bring important pages higher up in the hierarchy and improve SEO.
Internal Linking Strategy: By adjusting your internal linking strategy, you can ensure that search engines crawl important pages more efficiently, helping your SEO efforts.
It’s essential to have a logical site structure so both users and search engines can easily navigate and understand your website.