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SEOL

    Site architecture and URL hierarchy

    A clear structure helps people find pages and helps search engines understand how they relate. Keep important pages close to the home page and keep filter URLs under control.

    Time
    16 min
    Level
    intermediate
    Reviewed
    5 November 2026

    After this lesson you can

    • Design a hierarchy that matches your keyword map.
    • Keep important pages within a few clicks of the home page.
    • Control the URL explosion that filters and parameters cause.

    Site architecture is how pages are organised and linked. Good architecture comes from your keyword map: main topics become hub pages, subtopics become pages under them, and supporting articles link to the pages they support.

    A typical structure

    /                                   Home
├── /paslaugos/                     Services hub
│   ├── /paslaugos/kompiuteriu-remontas/
│   ├── /paslaugos/nesiojamu-kompiuteriu-remontas/
│   └── /paslaugos/duomenu-atkurimas/
├── /patarimai/                     Articles hub
│   ├── /patarimai/kompiuteris-neisijungia/  → links to the repair service
│   └── /patarimai/kaip-isvalyti-nesiojama-kompiuteri/
└── /kontaktai/

    Principles

    • Hubs and spokes: a hub page (category, service overview) links to its subpages, and the subpages link back to the hub and to each other where it is relevant.
    • Shallow for important pages: keep key pages within a few clicks of the home page. "Three clicks" is a popular rule of thumb rather than a Google rule. What matters is that important pages are well linked and easy to find.
    • Breadcrumbs show each page's place in the hierarchy, help users move up a level, and can be marked up with BreadcrumbList structured data.
    • Stable URLs: reflect the logical hierarchy in URLs, but do not rename URLs every time a menu changes.

    Pagination

    Long lists, such as categories with hundreds of products or blog archives, are split into pages. Make sure every page in the series is reachable through normal <a href> links, and that products deep in the list are also linked from elsewhere, such as subcategories, related products or filters that you do index. The e-commerce module covers pagination in detail.

    Filters and parameters

    Faceted navigation, where people filter by colour, size, price or brand, can create an almost unlimited number of URLs. Google has specific guidance:

    • Decide which filtered pages have real search demand, for example "women's running shoes", and give those clean, indexable URLs with unique content.
    • Keep the other combinations out of crawling, for example with robots.txt rules for parameter patterns, or by not exposing them as crawlable links.
    • Keep sorting, session and tracking parameters out of the index.

    Practice

    Read the lesson, pass the quiz and do the exercise to complete it.

    Knowledge check

    4 questions. Get at least 4 right to pass.

    1. 1. Why group similar pages in directories, such as /paslaugos/ and /patarimai/?
    2. 2. An important category is only reachable through six clicks of pagination. What is the risk?
    3. 3. A store's filters can produce millions of URL combinations. What is the main concern?
    4. 4. Should the URL hierarchy always mirror the navigation menus?

    Exercise: Sketch your site structure

    Draw your site's structure as a tree, from the home page to categories or services, to subpages and articles. Mark each topic from your keyword map on it. Note how many clicks each important page is from the home page (a crawler's "crawl depth" column shows this), and any important topic with no place in the tree.

    Deliverable: The tree, as a list or drawing, with crawl depth for important pages and a list of structural changes you recommend.

    Check your work honestly against each point
    Write up your work and meet every point to finish.

    Sources

    Checked against these sources on 5 November 2026. Next review by 5 May 2027.

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