A visitor comes to your website, looks for your price list and gives up after three clicks. Google, meanwhile, can’t tell which of five similar pages is the main one. Both problems have the same cause: a poor website structure.
In this article, you’ll learn how to set up a structure that helps both people and search engines, with a step-by-step guide and examples for an online store, a service business and a restaurant.
Why website structure matters
SEO is search engine optimization – everything that helps people find you on Google. UX (user experience) is how easily a person finds their way around your website and gets what they want. Website structure affects both at once.
- People quickly find what they’re looking for. Less wandering means fewer people leaving and more inquiries.
- Google understands your content better. From the hierarchy and links, it can tell which pages are the main ones and how they relate to each other.
- Important pages get more strength. Internal links distribute importance across your pages. Whatever is buried deep has a harder time in search.
- Your website is easier to expand. A new service or category has a clear place.
What a good structure looks like
The clearest option is a tree structure: the homepage, the main categories below it and subpages below those. One simple rule applies – important pages should be just a few clicks from the homepage, ideally no more than three.
Here’s what that can look like:
- Shoe store: Home › Shoes › Women’s shoes › Ankle boots › product.
- Heating company: Home › Services › Heat pumps; plus Projects, Prices, About us, Contact.
- Restaurant: Home › Lunch menu, Menu, Reservations, Events, Contact.
For a service business, it works well when each main service has its own page with a description, a price or price range, examples of your work and a form. A single shared “Services” page listing everything is harder to understand for both Google and customers, and it’s harder to send ad traffic to it.
Step-by-step guide
1. Write down what people look for on your website
Start with a list of the questions and topics customers come to you with, and the terms they type into Google. Every important topic or service should have one main page. If you have several similar pages on the same topic, they compete with each other and Google doesn’t know which one to show.
2. Group your content into categories
Sort topics into logical groups the way customers think about them, not by your company’s internal divisions. Customers search for “bathroom renovation”, not “division B”.
3. Design a clear menu
Your main menu should have only as many items as a person can scan quickly. Use specific names (“Prices”, “Projects”) instead of generic ones (“Solutions”, “Portfolio”). Your contact details and main call to action should always be close at hand.
4. Set up readable URLs
A page’s URL should mirror the structure and say what’s on the page. Instead of www.example.com/page?id=123, use www.example.com/shoes/women/. Keep it short, in lowercase, without special characters and with words separated by hyphens.
5. Connect pages with internal links
In your copy, link to related services, categories and articles. The link text should say where it leads – “window installation prices” is better than “click here”. No important page should be left without a link, otherwise neither people nor Google will find it easily.
6. Add breadcrumb navigation
Breadcrumb navigation is a line like “Home › Shoes › Women’s shoes”. Visitors see where they are and can go back one level with a single click. Google can also show breadcrumbs in search results.
7. Create a sitemap and submit it to Google
A sitemap.xml file is a list of pages you want to have in search. Most content management systems can generate it automatically, for example WordPress with an SEO plugin. Submit it through Google Search Console so Google knows about all your important pages.
What to watch out for with online stores
- Filters and sorting create lots of URLs with almost identical content. Handle them, for example, with a canonical tag, which tells Google which version of the page is the main one.
- A product listed in two categories should have one URL, not two.
- Don’t delete sold-out products without a replacement – redirect them to a similar product or to the category.
Tools for checking your structure
- Google Search Console – which pages are indexed, errors and an overview of internal links.
- Google Analytics 4 – how people move around your website and where they leave.
- Microsoft Clarity or Hotjar – click maps and session recordings.
- Screaming Frog SEO Spider – crawls your website like a search engine and shows page depth, broken links and duplicates.
If you suspect visitors get lost on your website, a UX audit is worth doing.
Frequently asked questions
How many levels should a website have?
As few as reasonably possible. Two to three levels are enough for a typical business website. Large online stores have more, but even there, people should be able to get to a product quickly through the menu, filters and search.
Can I change the URLs on an existing website?
Yes, but only with 301 redirects from the old URLs to the new ones. Without them, you’ll lose your search rankings and links from other websites. More in our article on the most common redesign mistakes.
Will a good structure also help with how I look in Google results?
Structure determines which pages exist and how they’re connected. How they appear in results is up to your title and meta description – you’ll find a guide in our article How to write titles and meta descriptions the right way.
Categories or tags on a blog?
Use categories for a few main topics, and tags only if you’ll really use them. Dozens of tags with a single article each create empty pages that help no one.
Final thoughts
You can’t see a good website structure, but you can feel it – people find what they’re looking for and Google understands what the website is about. It’s best to sort it out before the design. If you’re planning a new website or changes to your existing one, see how we approach website design.
