B2B website structure is a key part of making sure users, search engines and LLMs can navigate smoothly through your website. Unfortunately, B2B website structures are often created without taking into account buyer needs, resulting in higher bounce rates and missed opportunities for conversions.
In this blog, we’ll go through how you can create an SEO friendly B2B website structure that follows best practices, ensures user satisfaction, and improves your organic performance.
SEO best practices for website structure
Ahead of implementing your site structure, there are some key best practices to keep in mind:
Menu structure
Your site’s menu must be simple for the user to navigate around. It is best practice to group pages in your menu under clear headings, e.g. Services, Industries, About Us, Resources, so that users can quickly find what they are looking for. This also prevents crowded menus that are difficult to sort through.
Footer structure
Don’t underestimate the amount of users that navigate to the footer to find information. Footers are a great place to include key pillar pages, valuable resources (e.g. whitepapers), and authority signals like awards and accreditations if there is not enough room for them in your main menu.
The 3-click rule
Ideally, all pages on your site should be within 3 clicks of the homepage. This keeps the crawl budget efficient and prevents users from having to endlessly click around your website to find what they are looking for.
Breadcrumbs
Breadcrumb navigation is essential to help search engines understand the relationship between a page and the wider site. It also improves the appearance of the page in the SERPs and makes it easier for users to navigate around the site.
Subdirectories vs Subdomains
Think very carefully before creating a subdomain to split up content on your site. A subdomain should only be used if it is using a different server configuration or if you are using distinctly different branding. You should keep resources, e.g. blogs as subdirectories rather than subdomains so that you can pass on authority to your site.
Consistent taxonomy
Your site’s URL structure and taxonomy should be consistent throughout the site, e.g. service pages should always live under /services, industry pages should always live under /industries, etc. Be clear on how you want your pages to be organised and stick to that structure. Avoiding creating similar pages in different parts of your site to avoid cannibalisation.
Using topical mapping for an SEO friendly website structure
A topical map is essentially a visual representation of how different topics on your site relate to one another. They are used to make sure that your pages are neatly organised and discoverable for users.
Topical maps are made up of pillar pages, child pages, hub pages (e.g. Resources), and supporting content (e.g. blogs), and they are joined together with an internal linking strategy.
Pillar pages
Your pillar pages will likely be your key service and industry pages, which provide concise information on a broad topic. They should be linked in your main menu and serve as the foundation for any sub-pages or blogs related to the topic.
Child pages
These will be the sub-pages that follow on from your pillar pages. For example, AI Search would be a child page of SEO, as it is related to the broad subject of organic search, but going into more detail on a specific part of the topic. Your child pages should reflect their relation to their pillar page in both their URL structure (/seo/ai-search instead of just /ai-search) and breadcrumb navigation.
Hub pages
Hub pages are a valuable asset for B2B as they allow you to group together content for users that are in the comparison stage of the buying journey. These include:
- Resource hubs
- Case study hubs
- Integration hubs
- Feature libraries
Supporting pages
Supporting pages include blogs, guides, webinars, and whitepapers that support the topic of your pillar and child pages and point to them using internal links.
Internal linking
Once all of these pages have been created, you should use an internal linking strategy to show their relationship and pass on authority. For this to be effective, make sure that:
- Pillar pages link to all of their child pages.
- Child pages and supporting pages link to their pillar page near the start of the copy.
- Child pages link between each other when relevant.
- Pillar and child pages reference relevant supporting pages.
- Anchor text used in internal links uses one of the primary keywords of the page it is linking to.
Having your pages connected together through a topical map helps the user to journey through your site with ease, getting information about your business from a range of points that inform the buyer journey.
Optimising SEO website structure for the B2B buyer journey
It is important to consider how your website structure supports the awareness, consideration, and decision stages of the buyer journey so that you can reach your audience at each stage.
According to Gartner, 77% of B2B customers describe making a purchase as “very complex or difficult”, so it is important to give buyers access to as much information as possible to ease the challenges of making a decision.
Awareness
It is crucial for your website to have a Resources/Learning hub, with each piece of content linking back to the appropriate resource section and allowing users to explore your resources, e.g. /blog/what-is-capital-gains-tax.
Consideration
Industry and use-case sections should be carefully optimised to show your potential buyers that your business can meet their needs. Consider including interactive tools like calculators, templates, or comparison content to influence your audience at this stage.
Decision (conversion)
Your site should also include sections that prove your authority to potential buyers. Including a link to your case studies hub in your main menu is recommended, as well as links to awards and accreditations.
Site structuring for buyer personas
As well as structuring your website for different stages of the buyer journey, you should also sections of your site that can be tailored to buyer personas. B2B decisions usually involve multiple team members, so you should ensure that each of them can find information that is relevant to them.
To achieve this, you may want to organise your content by Industry, Roles, or Company Size, with each page including relevant internal links that allow the user to navigate to other sections while they browse.
Helping users navigate outside of the main menu
While your site’s main and footer menus will usually be the first place users will look at to navigate through your site, there are other ways to help them browse through your site efficiently. It is a good idea to incorporate other forms of navigation, like search bars or related content sections, that increase your dwell time and get users to the information they need faster.
On-site search
If a user has visited your site with a clear goal in mind, they may want to skip searching through your main menu and get to the content they want to see as quickly as possible. This is where a native search bar is extremely valuable. Optimising the search results from this function to display key landing pages first may improve lead generation. You may even want to include a second native search function on resource pages to help users navigate through them.
Related content sections
Related resources or ‘you might also like’ sections are a valuable asset on B2B websites because they allow buyers to assess different services or approaches smoothly before making a decision. They are also a valuable way to support your topical map by consistently internally linking between related content.
Filtering hub pages
For hub sections that include content on a variety of industries or services, it is extremely helpful to the user to give them the option to filter results based on their specific interests. Consider including filters on your blog, case studies, and resource hubs to make the user’s journey through these sections as smooth as possible.
Calls to action
To maximise conversions on your site, you should make sure that any conversion points can be easily accessed on any page. Contact pages, demo requests, and any other pages that require a user to take an action should be clearly visible as repeated sections, sticky elements, or in your header itself so that they can be accessed at any time.
Technical SEO considerations for B2B website structure
As well as being clean and well-organised, your site structure also has to be technically sound to be effective. Your site structure needs to be crawlable, indexable, and accessible to users on both mobile and desktop to succeed.
Crawl efficiency
Crawl waste is a common problem in SEO site structure, especially for large B2B sites that have a large number of outdated campaigns, parameterised URLs, or duplicate content. You should regularly audit your site and redirect or no-index any pages that are outdated, duplicated, or shouldn’t be indexed.
Internal link distribution
The more internal links a page has, the more important it is perceived to be by search engines. Your homepage should always be the top internally linked page on your site, followed by key pillar pages. Make sure that your internal linking structure passes the most authority to these highly important pages.
As well as this, you should regularly audit your site for orphan pages (meaning pages that have zero internal links pointing to them), and ensure that they have at least one page on the site linking to them.
XML and HTML sitemaps
Sitemaps are crucial to support the structure that you have set out for your site. They should be updated regularly, with any removed or redirected pages deleted, and include indexable URLs only. While HTML sitemaps are not essential, they are a helpful resource for both crawlers and users to provide a clean overview of your site structure and enforce it.
Mobile-friendliness
It is essential for your website to perform just as smoothly on mobile as on desktop. Google primarily uses the mobile version of a site for ranking and indexing, so make sure that your menus and any other navigational features can render correctly on all devices. Responsive design is also crucial for users to be able to navigate around your site on mobile.
Accessibility
Another key best practice for SEO friendly website structure, accessibility is vital for all users to be able to navigate through your site. Ensure that your site uses clear labels and readable fonts to improve engagement and prevent high bounce rates.
Keeping your website structure in good shape
Even after you have established a cohesive and effective site structure, there will always be new pages and sections to add, old pages to remove, and changes to implement. To make sure that your site structure continues to be SEO-friendly, make sure to:
- Be clear on where new pages will live in your site structure.
- Handle removed pages carefully: using appropriate 301 redirects, updating internal links, and removing deleted pages from your menus.
- Regularly update your sitemaps.
- Implement internal links to new pages and blogs.
- Measure the effectiveness of your site structure regularly and make amends as needed.
Measuring the success of Your B2B website structure
There are a number of ways to measure the impact of your site structure. Consider looking at:
- Crawl depth: Monitor for orphan pages and any changes in crawl frequency for important pages.
- Internal link distribution: Track the top internally-linked pages on your site and any changes in authority or visibility after internal links are implemented.
- User paths: Use path exploration in analytics tools to monitor if users are moving from awareness pages to consideration and decision content.
- Engagement metrics: Track click rates, pages per session, dwell time, and bounce rates to see if users are staying engaged on the site.
Final thoughts
I hope that this guide has given you some helpful tips and insights on how to create a B2B website structure that not only satisfies crawlers, but also supports lead-generation and long-term success for your business.
Remember that an SEO-friendly site structure is as good as the people who work to maintain it. With solid communication between team members and regular monitoring, you can create a site structure that consistently benefits your organic performance.
If you would like any further help or information on your SEO website structure, be sure to contact our friendly team who would be happy to help!
