Building a website structure: How to plan your success correctly

We see it again and again: Without a clear structure, website visitors quickly lose orientation. And when people don't find what they're looking for, they leave the page, often within a few seconds. This not only harms your conversion rate, but also your visibility in search results. After all, Google evaluates the user experience and chaotic navigation has a direct negative effect on your ranking. What does that mean for you in practice? If you plan the structure of your website in a targeted manner, you will improve both the user experience and your SEO performance.

Why do I need a website structure?

A look at our projects as an SEO agency shows that websites with a clear structure and an optimized user experience perform significantly better on average, both in terms of rankings and conversion rates. This is because Google evaluates user signals such as length of stay, click paths, and bounce rates. So the better the structure, the more positive the signals and the greater your success. We're talking about real user experience, the feeling that your visitors have when they click through your site. And this is exactly where details matter:

• Clearly understandable menu items,
• logically structured pages,
• a clear structure,
• well-thought-out call to actions and
• an intuitive link.

Most websites often fail not because of the technology or the content, but because users are unable to find their way around. It's very likely you know it yourself. You end up on a page, but you can't find the information you need or a clear path to the next step. That is exactly what should not happen on your website. As an SEO agency, we therefore ensure that all elements harmonize with each other when building websites for our customers. From headers to navigation to footers, everything follows a uniform logic. Important content is easily accessible, related topics are meaningfully linked, and each page has a clear purpose.

Strategic planning: The cornerstone of every successful website

Before you create your website, you should understand what it should stand for in the first place. Strategic planning ultimately forms the basis for a successful website, as it determines whether you run a website that is simply there or one that measurably supports your goals. Without a clear structure, goals and content, your presence will unfortunately remain interchangeable. But that is exactly what we are preventing together with you! The first step in planning is to define the core functions of your website. For example, do you want to build trust with your homepage, sell products in an online shop or generate inquiries via a contact form? Each goal has different requirements, whether from page layout to navigation to the selection of keywords. And the expectations of your users also play a major role. The better you understand them, the more targeted you can tailor your content to them.

At this point, we recommend that you start with a table of contents. This is not only used to organize your website content, but also as a visual aid when setting up the structure of a website. Think of the whole thing as the structure of a book. Chapter titles become main menu items, paragraphs become subpages. In this way, you always have an overview of your topics, content and page relationships. It is often particularly helpful to directly understand your planning in a content management system (CMS) such as WordPress, TYPO3 or Joomla. This allows you to determine at an early stage how your content should be structured, which pages fulfill which functions and where you want to place calls to actions, for example.

Building a website structure: The first planning draft

As soon as the strategic goals and subject areas have been determined, it is time to draft the first structure. This is where the actual construction of your website starts, now you give shape to the planning. This works best with a structured guide or visual tool, such as a sitemap or a mind map. Let's now assume that you want to build a website for your online shop. The start page is the central element. From here, main areas such as

• “products”,
• “About us,”
• “Blog” and
• “Contact.”

“Products” is then followed by structured sub-pages such as

• “Gentlemen”,
• “ladies,”
• “What's new” and
• “Sale.”

These areas can in turn be divided into smaller categories, for example by brand, color or function. Of course, you shouldn't just create or plan countless pages and blog articles now. It is often the case that less is more. A clear menu structure with a maximum of seven main elements usually works best. More overwhelms the user and makes your website confusing. It is therefore more important that each page fulfills a clear purpose. If you create content with no added value or goal, you're not only diluting your structure, but also damaging your SEO. Another important point in the planning draft is to take page hierarchies into account. In particular, make sure that your most important pages are accessible in a maximum of three clicks.

The header should also always contain your primary menu items, such as “Services,” “Prices,” “References,” or “Shop.” The footer, on the other hand, offers space for legal information, contact options or your email address. The sidebar can then include additional navigation or teaser elements to highlight related content.

An overview of the most important pages for building your website structure

Technical structure: This is how you lay the SEO foundation correctly

Let's start with a look at the basics: Your website should be mobile-optimized, load quickly, and have a clear URL structure. Modern websites rely on technologies such as responsive design, caching and lazy loading, for example. These measures ensure that your content is displayed quickly and correctly on all devices. Another crucial point is the content management system (CMS) that you use. Systems such as WordPress, TYPO3 or Contao automatically offer you many options to flexibly design your content while meeting technical SEO requirements. We are also happy to help you select and configure your CMS so that you are on the right track right from the start.

Structured data is also part of the technical structure. They help search engines better understand the content of your site. To do this, you can, for example, enrich product data, reviews or FAQ answers with so-called schema markups. This gives you additional features in search results, such as star ratings or drop-down items, which is a real advantage over competitors.

Content is king: But only if structure and relevance are right

The most beautiful content is of no use to you if it is buried somewhere on a hidden subpage. Let us therefore start with content planning now: Each content should be assigned to a clearly defined topic. Avoid putting too much different information on one page. A page, a topic, is one of the most important tips for a clear structure. This content focus not only helps your readers, but also Google to correctly rank the relevance of your content. But how individual elements build on each other can also have an influence. For example, a central call to action should always appear where you want users to take the next action, such as at the end of a blog article or in the middle of a page when you promote an offer. The more clearly the user knows what they should do, the higher the conversion rate. In practice, this means that your content must not only be high-quality and relevant, but must also be strategically embedded. You can use different levels of the hierarchy to logically structure your topics. Main topics belong to central pages, details or additions to well-linked sub-pages. This creates spaces within your website where users can move intuitively.

We are also happy to help you develop exactly this content and structure it in such a way that it achieves your goals. It doesn't matter whether it's about more visibility, more leads or better service, as an experienced SEO agency, you can count on us!

The role of internal linking in website architecture

A website structure is only really functional if it not only consists of main and sub-pages, but also has a well-thought-out network of internal links, which also applies away from the navigation menu. Among other things, this ensures that the SEO value (so-called “link juice”) is distributed within your pages. But many websites omit this strategic component and therefore leave enormous potential untapped.

How internal links can improve your SEO performance

For Google, every page is part of a large network of connections and internal links help the search engine to recognize which pages are related to each other, how relevant a topic is within the website and which pages are particularly important. Your benefits as a result:

• eine better indexing through Googlebot (crawling)
• eine greater weighting of important contentbecause Linkjuice is being shared
• eine logical connection between related topics and
• eine Improving user navigation through shorter click paths.

A classic example: You run a blog with nutrition advice articles and have a main page called “Dietary Advice.” Instead of just linking to this page in the menu, you should also specifically link to it from relevant articles (e.g. “10 tips against cravings”). This is how you signal to Google that the advice page is central and makes it easier for visitors to switch from reading mode to request. Especially when it comes to complex website structures, such as shop systems or multilingual websites, the bot often ends up in a dead end.

Use anchor texts, link goals and link depth strategically

The most important thing first: Not every link is the same. In particular, the anchor text, i.e. the visible link text, significantly influences how Google and users interpret the link. You should therefore avoid generic phrases such as “click here.” Precise terms such as “vegan recipes for beginners” or “web design for medical practices” are better. In particular, you should consider the following strategic aspects:

• Relevance of the link target: Only link to content that continues, supplements or deepens content. Each link should serve a comprehensible purpose.
• Avoid link farms: Too many links on a page dilute the structure. Focus on quality rather than quantity.

In this case, advice portals with thematic clusters are a good example of practice: If you publish an article about “the best vacuum cleaners 2025,” you can specifically link to related topics such as “vacuum cleaner accessories,” “the best vacuum cleaner bags,” or “clean vacuum cleaners properly,” ideally with well-thought-out anchor texts.

Best practices for meaningful linking from a user guidance perspective

In addition to the benefits for search engine optimization, internal linking is also a central element of the user experience. It helps decide how smoothly and logically website visitors can move through your content. The following best practices have proven effective in practice:

• Suggest related content: At the end of an article, you can link to further topics (“You might also be interested in this”), ideal for blogs and editorial sites.
• Visible breadcrumb navigation: This shows users where they are in the structure at any time and allows quick navigation back to higher levels.
• Category-based cross-linking: Within subject areas, you should regularly link pages together, for example all sub-pages of a topic such as “Tax Law for Self-Employed Persons.”

This practice can make the difference, especially for large websites with many types of pages, such as magazines or shops. Website visitors stay on the page longer, find relevant content more quickly and drop out less often, all positive signals for Google. So always keep an eye on the perspective of your users. Where do questions arise? Where can an internal link provide orientation or mark a logical next step? In the end, that is exactly the purpose of a well-thought-out website structure: It combines topics, controls behavior and ensures a clear, structured online presence.

Practical example: The optimal structure of a website for online shops

To give you a concrete insight into what a successful website structure looks like in practice, we will show you an example from e-commerce below. The structure of an online shop differs from classic corporate websites in many aspects. The focus here is on the product structure, and it must be right. The focus is on the start page, which must not be overloaded, but should clearly show where the path leads, namely to the categories. These form the next hierarchical level, such as “menswear,” “womenswear,” or “accessories.” Within these areas, the individual product pages, the so-called sub-pages, then follow.

In practice, the structure could then look as follows:

homepage

│

├── Category: Women's Fashion

│ ├── Subcategory: Clothing

│ │ ├── Product page: Red summer dress

│ │ ├── Product page: Blue maxi dress

│ │ ── Product page: Black cocktail dress

│ ├── Subcategory: Blouses

│ ─── SEO landing page: Women's clothes — trends & styling tips

│

├── Category: Menswear

│ ├── Subcategory: Suits

│ │ ├── Product Page: Grey Business Suit

│ │ ── Product Page: Smoking Black

│ ├── Subcategory: T-shirts

│ ─── SEO landing page: combine suits correctly

│

├── Category: Accessories

│ ├── Subcategory: Bags

│ ├── Subcategory: Belts

│ ─── Product page: Brown leather belt

│

├── Info pages in the side menu or in the footer area

│ ├── About us

│ ├── Shipping & returns

│ ├── FAQ

│ ─── Contact

│

├── Advice section (optional)

│ ├── Post: Which dress style suits my figure?

│ ├── Article: Material guide: What does the label say?

│ ─── Post: gift ideas for fashionistas

│

─── footer area

 ├── Impressum

 ├── Privacy Policy

 ├── TERMS AND CONDITIONS

 ─── Social media links

But filter functions, breadcrumbs, sorting and an intelligent search are also among the important navigation elements in the shop. You must enable users to get to their desired product with as few clicks as possible. And a good page structure, clear internal links and meaningful content placements help. For each product area, you should therefore set up a separate SEO landing page that contains relevant keywords, is well structured and, in addition to the product, also offers additional content such as tips, tips or usage examples. And cross-selling links such as “suitable products” or “customers also bought” can also be useful to increase the average shopping cart value.

Tools & tips for structured website creation

So that building a website structure doesn't end in chaos, you need the right tools, a solid plan, and a systematic workflow. We have therefore put together our best tool recommendations, including tips, for you below.

Sitemap & structure tools: How to visualize your website

As soon as it is clear which content your website should cover, you must group and hierarchize it sensibly. There are visual sitemap tools for this, which are ideal for the planning process, whether you're building a new website or planning a relaunch. From our experience, recommended tools include:

• GlooMaps: Free, intuitive, perfect for initial sitemap sketches or smaller projects. You can also add colors, notes, and hierarchical levels to your sitemap and share it with your team.
• Flowmapp: For UX-oriented projects. In addition to the classic sitemap view, Flowmapp also offers user journeys, wireframes and collaboration in real time, which makes the tool particularly valuable for agencies or larger website projects.
• XMind / MindMeister: Two mind mapping tools that can be misused They are particularly helpful when you want to visualize not only pages, but also relationships, content types, or funnel levels.

Screaming Frog: The SEO scanner for existing website structures

If you have an existing website, the Screaming Frog SEO Spider is the tool of choice for technically analyzing the current page architecture. In fact, it scans your entire website and provides you with a visual and tabular overview of:

• Crawl depth (How many clicks does it take to reach a page?)
• internal linking (Which pages are orphaned internally?)
• Duplicate content (Which pages have the same content or the same meta data?)
• Missing or inconsistent title tags, H1s, meta descriptions

So let's say you run an online shop with over 1,000 products. The Screaming Frog then shows you, for example, that a third of your products are at “Level 5” or lower, i.e. too far away from the start page. This is not only bad for crawlability, but also for conversion. However, thanks to the tool, you can now incorporate these pages into the navigation or relevant category pages.

Keyword tools: planning structure and content based on data

In the end, your structure must not only be logical from an internal point of view, it must also speak the language of your target group. That's why every planning should start with keyword research. Recommended tools for this include:

• Google Keyword Planner: Shows you the monthly search volume, competition and related terms.
• Ubersuggest: Particularly useful for long-tail keywords and content ideas.
• AnswerTheRepublic: Visualizes common questions about a keyword, making it ideal for FAQ pages and advice content.
• Sistrix or Ahrefs: Professional tools that also show which pages of your competition rank for specific keywords.

A good example of this: You are planning a new website for yourself as a nutritionist. With the tools, you find out that users are not looking for “services,” but for “nutritional advice for irritable bowel syndrome” or “losing weight without a yo-yo effect.” These terms should therefore be integrated directly into the website as SEO landing pages with a clear URL structure, not hidden under “Miscellaneous”.

Documentation: Create content matrix and structure tracking

Structural documentation is also an often underestimated step. However, especially with larger pages (>30 sub-pages), you should write down exactly:

• Which pages exist or are planned
• Which KKeywords they cover
• How they are linked internally
• Which conversion goals (e.g. download, booking, request) are being pursued

Helpful free documentation tools that we can recommend include:

• Google Sheets or Excel: Simple yet effective. Create a table with columns for URL, title, keyword, funnel level, internal links, and the planned release date.
• Notion or Trello: Ideal for collaborative projects and editorial planning. Here you can easily assign page status, tasks, and SEO goals per page.

And another tip at this point: It's best to assign a unique ID for each page (e.g. R01 for guide, P05 for product page) so that you can cleanly combine structure, content, linking and tracking. Especially for relaunch projects, this is often worth its weight in gold.

UX & Mobile First: Optimize structure for all devices

The website structure must also work on mobile devices. This not only applies to menu navigation, but also:

• Click paths (max. 3 clicks to the destination)
• breadcrumbs (navigation within the structure)
• “Sticky” navigation elements
• Reduced depth with high complexity (flat rather than deep structure)
• Tool tip: With mobile sitemap, you can check how well mobile pages are indexed in Google Search Console

So use a flat architecture in which the most important pages can be reached with two to three clicks, and integrate secondary content, such as footers, internal links or related content, but not into the main navigation.

Conclusion on building a website structure

A clear, logical structure helps users find their way around better, understand content and achieve their goals faster. At the same time, it allows search engines like Google to index and rank your content better, which directly leads to better rankings. With clearly defined steps, structured menu items, internal links and targeted call to actions, you ensure that your website not only works, but also converts. Each area, every subpage and every element fulfills a specific task. This makes your website a powerful tool for your marketing, sales and customer service.

At SEO Galaxy, we are happy to assist you, from initial planning to long-term optimization. Together, we create a website that is visible AND has an impact. So if you're ready to get the best out of your site, let's get started.

FAQ: Frequently asked questions about building a website structure

Below you will find answers to the most common questions about setting up a website structure.

What is the ideal structure of a website for SEO?

An ideal website structure is based on clear hierarchies, logical page layout and structured internal linking. Your content should therefore be divided into main and sub-topics that are easily accessible via navigation. All menu items should be formulated in an understandable, self-explanatory and search intention-oriented manner, while each subpage deals with a central topic and pursues a clear keyword goal.

How many levels of structure should my website have?

As a rule of thumb, we recommend no more than three levels. This means that a user should be able to get from the homepage to every important subpage with a maximum of three clicks. This keeps your page structure flat, clear and easy for Google to crawl. Too many hierarchies not only confuse your visitors, but also lead to SEO losses.

Which tools help to structure a website?

You can use tools such as “Flowmapp”, “GlooMaps” or “MindMeister” for visual structuring. For technical SEO checks, we recommend “Screaming Frog,” “Ahrefs,” or “SEMrush.” These tools show you exactly how your pages are linked to each other, whether there is duplicate content and where technical problems arise.

How can I tell if my website is well structured?

Ask yourself the following questions: Can users see at first glance what your site is about? Do they find important content without searching? Is it easy and intuitive to contact or make a purchase? If you hesitate about these points, a structural overhaul is worthwhile. A look at Google Analytics or the Google Search Console will also give you clues to possible weak points.

What do I do if my website already exists but is unstructured?

That is not a problem in itself. We would be happy to start a restructuring together with you. In doing so, we analyse existing content, define meaningful topics and logically rearrange pages. It is often also possible to achieve a significantly better structure by specifically summarizing, renaming or moving pages without having to re-create everything.

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