To investigate the structural component importance of traditional Chinese timber structures, we took post-and-lintel and column-and-tie timber structures, two typical residential timber structures in Jiangsu and Zhejiang areas, as the research targets. Based on energy method, the change of unit volume towards the strain energy of the whole structure after component attribute alteration was employed as the component importance evaluation index. By the finite element software Ansys (16.0), an implementing procedure was developed to assess the component importance of traditional timber structures using the element birth-death method and altering elastic modulus method, respectively. The analysis results show that the altering elastic modulus method is more suitable for calculation and analysis of component importance of traditional timber structures. Through the component importance analysis of one single and the whole frame under the vertical loads and the horizontal seismic action, the component importance coefficient and the sorting results of post-and-lintel and column-and-tie timber structures were obtained and the key components of traditional timber structures were thus selected accordingly. In addition, the analysis results can provide a scientific and reasonable theoretical basis for the determination of critical components of traditional timber heritages in the process of maintenance and structural health monitoring.