Website Sitemaps: How to Structure Your Pages
Before you design a single screen, decide which pages your website needs and how they relate to each other. That plan is a sitemap, and it is one of the cheapest, most useful things you can create. Not to be confused with the technical XML sitemap that search engines read, this is a planning tool for people.
Why structure matters
A logical structure helps visitors find what they need quickly, and it helps search engines understand which pages are most important. A messy structure leads to buried pages, duplicate content, and frustrated visitors who leave.
Start with a list
Write down every page you can imagine, then group related ones. A typical small business might end up with:
- Home
- About
- Services, with a page for each main service
- Work or portfolio
- Blog or resources
- Contact
Keep it shallow
Aim for important pages to be reachable within two or three clicks from the homepage. A page buried five levels deep is hard for visitors to find and less likely to be treated as important by search engines.
Group by how visitors think
Organize around your customers' questions, not your internal departments. People look for "Pricing" or "Book a visit", not "Operations". Use plain labels that match the words people actually use.
Give each page one job
If a page tries to cover three unrelated topics, split it. Dedicated pages for each service or product can target specific searches and give visitors exactly what they came for. See our guide to service pages for how to write them.
Plan navigation from the sitemap
Your top-level groups become your main menu. Keep it to five to seven items where you can, and avoid hiding key pages in deep dropdowns. Our article on navigation best practices covers this in detail.
Draw it out
You can sketch a sitemap on paper, in a spreadsheet, or with a simple diagramming tool. Boxes at the top for the main pages, with lines down to the pages beneath them, is all you need.
Plan for growth
Leave room for new pages, such as extra services or blog posts, without reshuffling everything. A flexible structure now saves redirects and rework later.
The bottom line
A page-structure plan takes an hour and keeps the whole project organized. Get it right first, and design, writing, and SEO all become easier.