Website structure: how pages should be arranged
Structure is the skeleton of a site. It is designed once and then lived with for years: reworking it later means changing addresses, losing positions and setting up redirects. So this is worth thinking through in advance.
Structure is built from demand: collect the queries, group them by meaning, and give each group its own page. The depth rule: no more than three clicks from the homepage to any important page. Rebuilding structure later is expensive — addresses change, redirects are needed, positions are lost.
In this article8 sections
Where correct structure comes from
Not from your head and not from a competitor's example, but from demand. First you collect the semantics, then group queries by meaning, and each group gets its own page. Structure is literally a map of grouped demand.
The check is simple: for every query you want to be found by, a page must exist that answers exactly that query. If it does not, the search engine has nothing of yours to show and shows a competitor instead.
The reverse order — build the site first, collect semantics after — leads to rebuilding half the pages, while some of the existing ones turn out to be needed by nobody.
How many levels of nesting
The rule: no more than three clicks from the homepage to any important page. Deeper pages get indexed worse and found by people less often.
| Level | What lives there | Example |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Homepage | / |
| 2 | Sections | /services/, /prices/, /about/ |
| 3 | Specific services | /services/cavity-treatment/ |
| 4 | Detail, if needed | /services/cavity-treatment/under-microscope/ |
A fourth level is justified only when there is real demand for it. Creating nesting for the sake of tidiness is harmful.
Rules for naming addresses
- Latin characters, lowercase, words separated by hyphens.
- Meaningful: /cavity-treatment/, not /page-id-472/.
- Short: two or three words is enough.
- No dates or extra levels, unless it is an archival blog.
- One ending convention — with or without a trailing slash, but the same across the whole site.
How to link pages together
Internal links do two jobs: they help the person find their next step, and they pass weight to your important pages.
- From articles to services. An analysis of a problem should lead to what solves it.
- Between related services. «Often ordered together with this.»
- From general pages to specific ones. The services section links to every service.
- Breadcrumbs. They show the person where they are and help the search engine read the hierarchy.
- Not linking to everything. Twenty links in a text dilute weight and make reading harder.
Typical structural mistakes
- Everything on one page. Ten services listed on a single «Services» page. None of them ranks.
- Duplicate pages. «Apartment renovation» and «Turnkey apartment renovation» with the same content compete with each other.
- Structure built on internal logic. Sections named the way accounting finds convenient, not the way people search.
- Important pages buried deep. Five clicks through an expanding menu to your main service.
- Empty pages. Created for a query but containing two sentences. Worse than not having them.
What to do when structure has to change
Sometimes there is no way around it: the site grew and the sections got tangled. The point then is not to lose the positions you have accumulated.
- Build a mapping tableEvery old address and the new one it corresponds to. Without exception.
- Set up permanent redirectsCode 301 from the old address to the new one. This passes most of the accumulated weight.
- Avoid chainsThe old address should lead straight to the final new one, not through two intermediate hops.
- Update internal linksIn the menu, in texts, in the sitemap — the new addresses must be everywhere.
- Submit the new sitemapThrough the webmaster panels, to speed up re-crawling.
- Watch for a monthA dip for two to four weeks is normal. If it has not recovered after six weeks, investigate.
The menu: how many items and in what order
A menu is not a table of contents for the site; it is the list of things a visitor needs most often. Everything else lives in the footer and in internal links.
- Five to seven items in the main menu. More and people stop reading them.
- First comes what they come for: usually services.
- Prices as a separate item, if you have them. It is one of the most clicked sections.
- Contacts last — that is the established expectation.
- Dropdowns only when there really are many items inside.
How to test structure for clarity
A simple test that takes ten minutes and usually shows more than a long discussion.
- Write down five tasks people come to you with.
- Hand the site to someone outside your field and ask them to solve each one.
- Stay quiet and watch where they click and where they get stuck.
- Anything that took more than three clicks or raised a question is a candidate for reworking.
A business owner is the worst possible tester of their own site: they know where everything is. You need someone seeing it for the first time.
Frequent questions
How many pages should a site have?
As many as there are demand groups you want to cover. For a small company that is usually 10–30 pages. The number itself means nothing — what matters is that each one answers a real query.
Do we need a blog?
If your niche has informational queries, yes — it brings people in at an earlier stage of choosing. If people search for the service directly, the money is better spent on service pages.
Can we add pages gradually?
You should. The structure is designed as a whole, but the building follows priority: first where there is demand and money, then the rest.
What to do with old unnecessary pages?
If they get traffic, update them. If not, and they duplicate others, merge and redirect. Simply deleting into a 404 is only worth it for outright junk.
What if there are more than fifty services?
Group them: section — subsection — service. Give separate pages to the ones people actually search for, and gather the rest into lists inside the subsections.
Do we need an «About» page?
Yes. It rarely brings traffic, but people look at it before making contact and it affects trust. For a local business it is also a signal that the company is real.
The materials answer general questions. We will look at your specific case — free and without obligation.