Site architecture for SEO growth

What site architecture means

Site architecture is the way your pages are grouped and linked: the menu, the folders in your URLs, the hub pages that list related content and the links between them. On a five-page site it barely matters. Once you have dozens or hundreds of pages, it matters a great deal.

A good structure means visitors can find what they need in a few clicks, and search engines can work out which pages are most important and how topics relate. Google's SEO starter guide recommends grouping topically similar pages in directories for this reason.

Start from what customers look for

The most common mistake is organising a site around the business's internal structure: departments, product codes or the order services were added. Customers don't think that way.

Start instead with the groups of things people search for. A building firm's customers might think in terms of:

• Extensions
• Loft conversions
• Renovations
• New builds

Each becomes a section. Inside each section sit the more specific pages: single-storey extensions, kitchen extensions, wraparound extensions, and so on.

Keep it shallow, but not flat

Every important page should be reachable within a few clicks of the home page. But putting every page in the main menu makes it unusable.

A sensible pattern for a small business:

• Home page linking to main sections.
• Section pages (hubs) introducing each service area and linking to specific pages.
• Specific pages for individual services, products or guides.

Three levels is enough for most small sites.

URLs that reflect the structure

Readable URLs help people understand where they are. A structure like this is easy to follow:

• /extensions/
• /extensions/kitchen-extensions/
• /extensions/single-storey-extensions/

Google's guidance on URL structure recommends simple, descriptive URLs using words rather than long ID numbers.

Don't restructure URLs on an established site just for neatness, though. Every changed URL needs a redirect, and changes carry risk. Get it right for new sections and leave working URLs alone unless there's a strong reason.

Hub pages that earn their place

A hub page is more than a list of links. A good one:

• Introduces the topic in a few paragraphs.
• Helps visitors choose the right option. "Not sure whether you need a loft conversion or an extension? Here's how they compare."
• Links to each specific page with a short description.
• Links to related guides.

Hubs often rank for broader searches, while specific pages rank for narrower ones.

When to split a page

Split a page when it covers several services that people search for separately, and each has enough to say. Signs it's time:

• The page has sections that each answer different questions.
• Search Console shows the page appearing for quite different searches.
• Customers ask about each part separately.

When to merge pages

Merge pages when several cover the same thing with little difference. Common examples:

• Several blog posts on the same topic written over the years.
• Location pages with near-identical text.
• Separate pages for tiny variations, such as "boiler repair" and "boiler repairs".

Combine them into one stronger page and redirect the old URLs. Google's guidance on consolidating duplicate URLs explains why this helps.

Navigation that supports the structure

• Main menu: sections and a few key pages such as pricing and contact.
• Breadcrumbs: show where a page sits, such as Home / Extensions / Kitchen extensions.
• Contextual links: link between related pages in the body text.
• Footer: contact details, legal pages and perhaps secondary sections.

A worked example

A garden design firm's site had grown over eight years to around 120 pages. The menu had fourteen items. Blog posts, project write-ups and service pages were all mixed together under /blog/. Several services had two or three overlapping pages.

The firm mapped every page into a spreadsheet and grouped them:

• Design services: garden design, planting plans, consultations.
• Build services: patios, decking, garden rooms, fencing.
• Projects: write-ups grouped by type.
• Advice: guides on planting, planning permission and maintenance.

Overlapping service pages were merged with redirects. The menu shrank to five items. Each section got a hub page linking to everything within it. Project write-ups linked to the relevant service, and service pages showed their best projects.

Nothing was deleted without a redirect, and the new structure was introduced in stages over a couple of months rather than all at once.

Planning for growth

Before adding a new type of content, ask where it will live. If you're about to add twenty location pages, or a new product range, decide on the section, URL pattern and hub page first. Retrofitting structure later is much harder.

Common mistakes

• Every page in the main menu.
• Important pages reachable only through the blog archive.
• Tag pages and category pages that create hundreds of thin, duplicate lists.
• Changing URL structure on every redesign.
• Deep chains of pages where visitors must click through four levels to reach a service.

Questions