best practices for ecommerce site structure for SEO
inspireclicks
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.
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.
