Website Architecture Planning

We start with your business and your visitors. We list what you sell, which services earn the most, what you want to grow, and who your customers are. We interview your team, read enquiries and reviews, and note the questions people ask before buying. We then research search demand. We collect the terms people use for your services, group them by topic and intent, and see how competing sites organise similar content. Some topics deserve their own page, some are best handled as sections of a page, and some belong to the blog or help centre. We map each topic to one primary page, avoiding overlaps where two pages target the same search; see SEO blog strategy for content that supports service pages. For an existing site, we audit current pages, traffic, links and conversions, and mark each page to keep, improve, merge, redirect or remove. This protects value earned over time. From the research we design the hierarchy. A common pattern has a home page, service categories, individual services, supporting information pages, location pages if relevant, a blog or resource centre, and trust pages such as about, case studies and contact. We aim for important pages within three clicks of the home page, with category pages that explain and link rather than simply list. We choose a URL pattern that reflects the hierarchy, uses plain words, avoids dates and parameters, and can grow without breaking. We design navigation around tasks: how a visitor looks for a service, compares options and decides to contact. We limit the main menu to a manageable number of items, plan mega menus or dropdowns carefully for mobile, and decide what belongs in the footer. Next comes internal linking. We define link paths from categories to services, from services to related services and proof, and from blog articles to the pages they support. We specify anchor text patterns that are descriptive and natural. We also plan templates, so that each page type has a consistent structure; see content strategy for content standards. If you are changing an existing site, we prepare a redirect map and a migration checklist to protect rankings. The deliverable is a sitemap diagram, a page inventory spreadsheet with purpose, keyword and priority, URL list, navigation proposal and linking rules, plus a phased rollout. We cannot guarantee rankings or sales from a structure alone, since content quality, links and competition matter, but a clear structure makes everything built afterwards easier to rank, maintain and use.