Best practices for ecommerce site structure prioritize crawl efficiency, user navigation, and topical authority by organizing products into shallow, keyword-rich hierarchies that search engines can easily understand and users can shop intuitively.

1. Flat, Hierarchical URL Structure

Homepage
├── /category/ (e.g., /tires/)
│   ├── /category/subcategory/ (e.g., /tires/passenger-car/)
│   │   └── /product-name/ (e.g., /tires/passenger-car/michelin-primacy-205-55-r16/)
│   └── /brand/ (e.g., /tires/michelin/)
└── /blog/

Keep important PDPs within 3 clicks from homepage; use hyphens, lowercase, keywords.
Avoid parameters (?sort=price); use clean URLs with canonicals for facets.

2. Category Silo Architecture

Silo Level	Purpose	Internal Linking Pattern
Pillar Category	Main navigation (Tires, Wheels, Accessories)	Links to subcategories + featured PDPs
Subcategory	Specific buyer intent (Passenger Tires, Truck Tires)	Links to products + parent category
Product Pages	Transactional keywords	Links to related products + parent categories
Brand Pages	Authority consolidation	Links to all brand products + filters

3. Strategic Internal Linking

Category → 12 Featured PDPs + All Subcategories
PDP → Related Products + "You May Also Like" + Upsells + Category Page
Blog Post → 3-5 Relevant PDPs + Category Pillar
Homepage → Top Category Pages + Hero Products

Use descriptive anchor text (“best all-season tires for SUVs”); limit footer links to 50.

4. Faceted Navigation Control

Filter Type	SEO Treatment
Stock/Price Range	Canonical to base category; noindex facets
Color/Size	rel=”alternate” for variants; canonical to main PDP
Brand/Manufacturer	Separate brand taxonomy pages
Pagination	rel=next/prev up to page 5; noindex beyond

5. Breadcrumbs and Site Navigation

Home > Tires > Passenger Car Tires > Michelin Primacy 205/55 R16

Implement structured breadcrumb schema on every PDP/category.
Mega menu: Categories → Subcategories → Images + Hero PDPs.

6. XML Sitemap and Crawl Optimization

sitemap-index.xml
├── sitemap-categories.xml (500 URLs)
├── sitemap-products-1.xml (50K URLs, priority 0.8)
├── sitemap-products-2.xml
└── sitemap-blog.xml

Update daily; exclude noindex/low-value facets; submit in GSC/Bing.
robots.txt: Allow /category/, /product/; block /search/, /account/.

7. Platform-Specific Best Practices

Platform	Key Settings
Shopify	Auto-generate handles; Collections → Products linking
WooCommerce	Custom permalinks; Yoast canonicals; Product Categories
Magento	URL Rewrite rules; Layered Navigation canonicals

Validation Checklist

✅ All categories indexable in GSC
✅ No duplicate titles across variants  
✅ PDPs rank for branded + transactional terms
✅ Category pages rank for informational queries
✅ Crawl budget sufficient (GSC Crawl Stats)

This structure delivers 30-50% organic growth for ecommerce in 6-12 months—audit current crawl paths first.