How to plan a company website: pages, sitemap and URL structure
Websites and search visibility
8 min read
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A company website needs three decisions on paper before anyone opens a design tool: what job the site should do for a visitor, which pages that job needs, and how those pages link to each other. Planning a company website means making those three decisions in that order. Each page should answer one question, and the number of pages follows from that.
In the middle of this post there is an inventory table you can copy, and near the end the page tree of a real nine-service site. Moving an existing site, with its old addresses, is a separate job covered in how to avoid SEO loss when redesigning your website.
How do you plan a company website?
In five stages:
- The site’s job: what does a visitor do when the site has worked? Fill in a form, call, ask for a quote.
- The visitor’s questions: who arrives, and what do they want to know before they get in touch?
- A page inventory: each question gets a page, and any page without a question is dropped from the list.
- Grouping, menu and addresses.
- Links between pages: from where to where, in which words.
When the designer and the writer start from this output, “what goes on this page?” doesn’t get argued halfway through the build. On our own website projects the first step is the scope and the page map, and the page map plus text drafts are part of what is delivered.
Which pages should a company website have?
Nearly every company site has the same core:
- Home page: who you are, who you work for, and the next step.
- Services: one overview page and, where it makes sense, one page per service. The next section sorts out which.
- About: how the work is done and who you would be working with.
- Contact: the one place for the form, phone number or email.
Everything beyond the core depends on the business. A clients page, if you have work you may show. A team page, if visitors want to know who will do the job. A careers page, only when you really are hiring. A blog, if you can publish regularly; one that goes quiet after three posts looks like a house with the lights off. And any site with a form or cookies usually needs a privacy notice and a cookie policy; the exact scope is worth settling with a lawyer.
Should every service get its own page?
Three questions decide it:
- Does it have its own search intent? Do people look for this service by its own name?
- Is there at least a page of original content? Can you say what is done, for whom, and how it goes?
- Does it have its own next step? Does someone who wants this go somewhere different from everyone else?
Three yeses make a separate page. A no means the service can stay a section on the overview page.
A fictional case: a commercial roofing contractor offering flat roof repair, gutter cleaning and annual roof inspections. The annual inspection earns its own page: different people search for it, how often and what it covers can be explained at length, and the next step is booking a survey. Gutter cleaning and downpipe clearing sit better together on one page, since there isn’t a page’s worth of separate material for each. Whether people really search for them separately needs search volume data. This post has no figures.
What is a sitemap? The planning document and the XML file
One name, two different things.
The planning sitemap is the tree in which pages are grouped and connected. The designer, the writer and the person who signs off all work from it. An XML sitemap is a file that lists pages for search engines.
According to Google Search Central’s sitemap overview, if your pages are properly linked, Google can usually discover most of the site on its own. A site of about 500 pages or fewer that is well linked internally may not need one. Large sites, new sites with few external links, and sites heavy on images or video may benefit. Submitting the file is covered in how to set up Google Search Console.
That is why the order matters. The planning document comes first and the XML file falls out of it.
What does a page inventory look like?
One row per page, one column per promise that page makes. Four rows filled in for the fictional roofing contractor:
| Page | Purpose | Main question | Target search | Main button | Content owner | Status |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Home | Introduce the firm, route to services | What do they do, are they right for me? | Brand name | Request a survey | Owner | Draft |
| Annual roof inspection | Get survey bookings | How often, what is covered? | Volume: data needed | Book a survey | Operations lead | Text pending |
| Flat roof repair | Get repair enquiries | What kinds of damage, what happens first? | Volume: data needed | Request a quote | Operations lead | Not written |
| Contact | Collect enquiries | How do I reach you? | Brand name | Send form | Owner | Ready |
Two columns tend to be skipped: content owner and status. Pages are late more often because of the text than the design, and when nobody is named as the writer, nobody writes. Filling in the target search column without volume data would mislead, so “data needed” is the honest entry.
How should menus, URLs and links be set up?
Think of airport signs. Travellers look for the word “Gates” and the airline’s own terminal code means nothing to them. Menu labels work the same way: they should use the words a visitor would use, such as “roof inspection” or “request a quote”; internal jargon tells a visitor nothing.
For addresses, Google’s URL structure guidance is plain: readable words instead of long ID numbers, words in your audience’s language, hyphens between words, not underscores. Choosing a short, lasting address now saves redirects later, because an address that changes after publishing needs one.
The link plan is part of the inventory. From a service page to the related post, from the post back to the service, from a case study to the service. Per Google’s link guidance, a link is crawlable when it is an a element with an href, and its text should describe the page it leads to. “Read more” does not.
A real example: how a nine-service studio site is grouped
This is the structure of our own site:
Home
Services (overview page)
Strategy and brand
Brand strategy and positioning
Consulting and workshops
Identity and design
Brand identity and design
Campaign planning and print-ready design
Web and content
Websites and search visibility (SEO)
Content, social media and written communications
Growth and measurement
Performance marketing and advertising
Email and customer relationships
Measurement, reporting and GA4
Blog
About us
Team
Clients
Write to us
Legal pagesThe four groups live only in the card layout on the home page. The menu lists the nine services flat, and the addresses carry no group name; everything sits under /en/services/. As a result, moving a service into another group changes no address. The Turkish version follows the same tree at the root.
Four headings give a first impression faster than nine cards read one by one, but the groups never replaced the core: home, services, about, contact. A structure like this suits a studio with many services; a firm with one service would find it excessive. For what goes into the scope of a site, see how much does a small business website cost, and on our website and search visibility service the plan starts with the page map.
Frequently asked questions
What pages should a business website have?
A home page, services, an about page and contact are the common core. Clients, team, careers and a blog are added as the business needs them. What keeps a page on the list is that it answers a visitor question and leads to a next step.
Do I need a team page or a careers page?
A team page helps when visitors want to know who will do the work, which is common for service businesses. A careers page only makes sense when you are actually hiring. An empty one makes the site look out of date.
Do I need a blog on a company website?
Not necessarily. It adds value when posts can be published regularly, answer questions visitors have and link to service pages. A schedule you can’t keep looks worse than no blog at all. Finish the core pages first and add the blog later.
Is a sitemap the same as an XML sitemap?
No. A sitemap is usually a grouped plan of pages made for the team. An XML sitemap is a file that lists pages for search engines. Every project needs the first; the second is optional for small, well-linked sites. The plan is made before the build, while the file can be produced once the pages exist.
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Services
- Brand strategy and positioning
- Brand identity and design
- Websites and search visibility (SEO)
- Content, social media and written communications
- Performance marketing and advertising
- Email and customer relationships
- Measurement, reporting and GA4
- Campaign planning and print-ready design
- Consulting and workshops