Mastering site structure: Information Architecture for better SEO and user journeys

Why website structure matters for users and search engines

At its heart, a website is simply a collection of individual files we call web pages. Your website’s structure (or information architecture) governs how those web pages link together.

The link between site structure and SEO performance

If your website is a city, your structure is the road network. A smooth, logical layout helps search engines understand what’s important and how everything connects.

Pages buried too deep? Google might not even find them. Good structure surfaces your key content, builds relevance around themes, and supports internal linking, all big ticks for SEO.

How good information architecture improves user experience

But this isn’t just about bots.

Your visitors need to find what they’re looking for without friction. Clear structure reduces bounce rates, encourages exploration, and makes your content feel credible.

In fact, almost 90 % of online users won’t return to a website after a bad user experience, a reminder that UX and structure matter deeply.

Core principles of website information architecture

Website taxonomy and content hierarchy explained

Effective website information architecture starts with clear taxonomy and a logical content hierarchy. These are the foundations of findability and user engagement.

Whether you’re planning an SME website or a large-scale government portal, getting this right matters.

In our project with the Department of Health and Social Care, users struggled to locate key content due to disorganised structure.

By working with end users and auditing navigation pathways, we proposed a simplified hierarchy that prioritised utility and clarity, an approach that can benefit any organisation.

Labelling, categorisation and metadata basics

Your content labels (like “Services” or “Resources”) should be intuitive, consistent, and user-centric. Metadata (including titles, descriptions and structured data) supports both search engines and screen readers, ensuring content is accessible and findable.

At DHSC, we facilitated card sorting exercises to refine labelling across their intranet, resulting in categories that better reflected user expectations and improved search accuracy.

Keeping content discoverable with shallow page depth

Deep content silos may hide useful resources, but they also bury them.

A shallow site structure helps users find what they need fast, improves crawlability, and enhances internal linking opportunities.

For the DHSC project, this meant reorganising ad hoc content placements into a leaner structure, validated through live testing and card sorting.

The result was a faster, more intuitive user experience. 

Planning your website’s navigation and URL structure

Building intuitive navigation architecture

A well-structured site is like a good tour guide, it knows exactly where to take your users and makes sure they don’t get lost along the way.

Start with top-level navigation that mirrors your primary service or content pillars. These should be instantly recognisable and mutually exclusive—no overlapping, no guesswork.

From there, break down each section with consistent, predictable sub-navigation. If users have to stop and think about where to click next, you’ve already lost them.

To validate your structure, run user testing or card-sorting exercises. These give you real insight into how people interpret your labels and groupings.

Structuring categories, subcategories and landing pages

Every page needs a reason to exist, and a place to belong.

Start by grouping related content into categories and subcategories. Think: service areas, sectors, resources, or product types. Each group should lead to a clear landing page, acting as a hub that introduces the topic and connects to related content.

This is where information architecture (IA) meets SEO strategy. Your category pages can rank for broad keywords, while child pages target more specific long-tail phrases.

Creating crawlable, SEO-friendly URLs

Your URL structure should be readable, logical, and flat.

Not a maze of parameters and meaningless numbers.

Google says it best: “A site’s URL structure should be as simple as possible.” Clean URLs help both search engines and humans understand where they are.

Stick to lowercase letters, hyphens (not underscores), and remove unnecessary stopwords. For example:

• ✅ /services/seo-consulting
• ❌ /page.php?id=145&cat=seo

Avoid excessive folder depth, no one wants to be seven clicks deep in /home/our-business/services/uk/seo/onpage/local/.

Two to three levels max is ideal.

And remember, if you restructure, 301 redirects are your best friend. They keep your SEO equity intact and users on track, check these with tools like Screaming Frog and Ahrefs.

Internal linking and site maps

Creating a logical internal linking architecture

Good internal linking isn’t about quantity, it’s about structure. We favour a pyramid approach. Start with your homepage at the top, flow down into key service areas, and finish with deeper, supporting content.

Each page should help guide the user (and search engines) through a clear journey. This hierarchy reinforces topical relevance, spreads authority, and keeps your important pages discoverable.

At Vu, we blend manual and tool-assisted strategies to optimise this.

For smaller sites, we’ll often manually identify keywords, use the site:search operator, and interlink contextually across pages.

On larger sites, Ahrefs’ internal link suggestions come into play, although they often need a human touch to be effective.

If you’re working in WordPress, plugins like Yoast SEO or Rank Math make it easy to monitor orphaned content and audit internal links over time.

Site maps, breadcrumbs and click depth optimisation

A logical link structure needs to be supported by clean, crawlable navigation elements. This is where site maps and breadcrumbs come in.

Every site should have two types of sitemaps:

• A visual HTML sitemap, which helps humans navigate your site
• An XML sitemap (sitemap.xml), which search engines use to crawl and index your pages

Most SEO plugins will auto-generate the XML sitemap, and tools like Screaming Frog or Google Search Console can verify whether your pages are being properly discovered.

Breadcrumb navigation is another powerful tool, especially on deep sites. It not only improves UX but adds internal links higher up your site’s hierarchy, strengthening those all-important category and landing pages.

And don’t forget click depth. As a rule of thumb, any key page should be reachable within 3 clicks of the homepage. Pages buried too deep are often ignored by both users and crawlers.

SEO experts at LinkGraph point out that click depth significantly affects a site’s search engine ranking and user experience.

Tools, templates and examples for mapping IA

How to visualise content hierarchies

Creating a clear and intuitive information architecture starts with visualising your content in a way that’s easy to interpret and share.

One of the simplest tools for this is GlooMaps, a free and easy-to-use sitemap creator. It allows you to quickly sketch out your content structure and visualise how pages relate to one another.

Whether you’re redesigning a complex site or starting fresh, seeing your hierarchy in this format makes identifying redundancies or missing links much easier.

If you’re working with clients or teams, platforms like Lucidchart or Whimsical offer more collaborative environments, while Adobe XD is useful if you’re moving straight from IA to design.

We also recommend reviewing your layout decisions alongside our guide on how to create a wireframe for a website to make sure your IA supports clear content presentation.

Free tools for mapping and auditing site structure

When it comes to checking your existing site structure, tools like Screaming Frog, Ahrefs, and Sitebulb are excellent for identifying:

• Broken links or redirect chains
• Orphaned pages
• Inconsistent crawl depths
• Pages with poor internal linking

Yoast SEO (or similar plugins) can help guide your internal linking efforts if you’re using WordPress, but don’t rely on them exclusively.

For bigger websites, pairing these tools with a manual audit is essential. We often begin by identifying cornerstone pages, then layer on contextual internal links from supporting content. Ahrefs’ “Link Opportunities” tool gives a decent starting point, but always sanity check the suggestions.

For those struggling with scale, we’ve found that defining a top-down pyramid structure helps prioritise linking. Think: homepage at the top, followed by core services or categories, and finally blog posts or deep content.

Common pitfalls and how to avoid them

Many sites suffer from IA issues because they’ve grown organically.

Pages added as needed, with little thought for hierarchy. This results in bloated menus, hidden content, and confused users.

Common issues include:

• Too many top-level categories: making it hard to scan or digest
• Unclear naming conventions: leading to uncertainty about what’s behind a link
• Overuse of “miscellaneous” or “other” categories: which dilute clarity
• Duplicated content paths: making SEO cannibalisation more likely

We encountered this first-hand during our work on Careflex’s website redesign. By restructuring their content into an “information hub” format, we increased traffic, improved engagement metrics, and simplified user journeys across their educational content.

A well-mapped IA isn’t just good UX, it’s good SEO. It allows Google to crawl your site efficiently and users to find what they need without friction.

Next steps: aligning IA with your content strategy

Structuring for scale and future content expansion

One of the biggest mistakes in planning a website’s information architecture is designing for now instead of what’s next.

Whether you’re launching with ten pages or a hundred, the way you group content today should support future growth.

Think modularly: can this category hold multiple subtopics? Will this layout still work when you double your blog output? What happens when you add a new service?

Start with broad content pillars and layer in supporting pages underneath. This approach gives you flexibility to build authority in key topic areas over time. For example, a single “Blog” page today might evolve into multiple hubs covering news, how-tos, case studies, and resources. Plan for that from the start.

You should also future-proof your URL structure, keep it logical, short, and scalable. For instance, /services/web-design is easier to expand than /web-design-service.

This kind of structured planning doesn’t just make things easier for your team, it makes life easier for your users, too. A satisfying user experience (UX) encourages visitors to stay longer, reduces bounce rate, and can positively affect your site’s SEO performance. According to Backlinko, Google uses signals like dwell time as part of its 200+ ranking factors.

Collaborating with design, dev and SEO teams

Information architecture doesn’t live in a silo. It affects (and is affected by) UX design, development decisions, and ongoing SEO work. So collaboration is essential.

Designers should understand how the IA supports user journeys and calls to action. Developers need clarity on how content templates will scale. SEOs need to ensure internal linking and crawlability are baked into the structure.

Working together also creates a more unified brand experience. Why? Because website structure is brand experience.

According to SWEOR, 75% of users judge a company’s credibility based on website design. If your structure is clear, helpful, and easy to navigate, visitors will associate that ease with your service or organisation.

At Vu, we bring all three disciplines to the table from the start. This cross-functional approach avoids the common disconnects between “how it looks” and “how it performs.” It also ensures content is structured with both search engines and real users in mind.

If you’re a charity, public sector team, or small business planning a new site (or rethinking an old one) our advice is simple: build for clarity, scale, and long-term discoverability.

Need help planning a website structure that works for users and Google?

Great site architecture is just the start. From keyword research and SEO strategy to user experience and performance tracking, our team can help you build a site that actually delivers. Let’s talk.

Examples of our work

Want to see the results? Explore our case studies to see how we’ve helped Exeter businesses go further online.

Department of Health and Social Care

To provide practical, evidence-based recommendations to the DHSC, so employees can benefit from an improved intranet.

Read More about Department of Health and Social Care

Careflex

A modern e-commerce platform that makes complex information feel simple. Delivered with clarity, structure and substance.

Read More about Careflex

Attomarker

To incorporate the trusted Attomarker brand into the graphic design of a mobile app dashboard and a novel 'Liver Game'.

Read More about Attomarker