What your website structure is really telling clients
Your website has two structures: the menu, and the one that's grown beneath it. A content audit shows which version of your firm clients actually see.
Most professional services firms think their website is well organised because the menu looks sensible.
That’s understandable. The main services are there. The blog has somewhere to live. There may be case studies, sector pages, a contact page and an about page. Nothing looks obviously chaotic. Nobody opens the homepage and immediately feels the urge to turn to drink.
But the menu is only the official version of the website structure.
Over time, another structure develops underneath it. This one isn’t planned. It spreads through internal links, outdated articles, URL paths, excessive page depths, repeated subjects and neglected pages. It’s also shaped by all the small decisions that accumulate after a site has gone live.
You know the story. A page got added for a campaign. A service was renamed, but its metadata weren’t. Someone wrote a useful article in response to a client’s question, and it’s now obsolete. Georgina from marketing published a case study to great fanfare, then left it in a location nobody would think of visiting.
I often think of websites like these as archaeological sites.
The current business may be discernible on the surface. Beneath it, though, are layers from earlier versions of the firm. Old priorities. Obsolete service names. Forgotten campaigns. Blog posts that answer questions no one is asking any more.
Some of these layers may still be valuable. Others may be more like the bit of Roman wall underneath a branch of Pret. Interesting, but not really helping anyone to choose lunch.
The point is simple. These hidden layers still shape the site. Sometimes they can drag it down.
The menu is only one website structure
This isn’t an argument against clear navigation. Menus matter. No one wants a website that requires the exploration skills of John Hanning Speke in search of the source of the Nile. They just want to find stuff.
But even a good menu can only tell part of the story.
Another vital website structure is built by the relationships between pages. It’s shaped by what the homepage links to. It’s also shaped by which service pages have supporting content, where articles send readers next, and whether proof appears close to the point where a buyer may need reassurance.
That is why website architecture matters beyond design and navigation.
It’s not just about where pages sit. It’s about how the site helps people understand what matters.
This can be revealing on professional services websites. They often contain several versions of the firm at once. For example:
- An accountancy firm may want to help business owners make better decisions, keep more of what they earn and sleep through January. The website may have other ideas. Its centre of gravity might still be COVID support schemes and the annual question of whether a Christmas party can survive contact with HMRC.
- An insurance broker may want to help clients protect sites, stock, contracts and cash flow when things go wrong. The website, meanwhile, may behave as if the firm’s true calling is insuring Tom Jones’s chest hair.
- A law firm may want to help business owners avoid expensive mistakes, protect what they’ve built and stop small problems turning into expensive disputes. The site may then invite them to navigate by practice area, department and through phrases with a faint whiff of Hulle v Orynge. Useful, perhaps, but not ideal if the client’s problem has moved on from 15th-century thorn retrieval.
The tricky thing is that these sites usually look respectable and even up to date. That’s partly why the problem gets missed. They don’t look broken. They look finished, and that’s often more dangerous.
What the dig uncovers
People in content, SEO and the newer field of AI GEO search often talk about pillar pages and supporting content.
The idea is useful enough. Some pages carry weight. These are pillars. Other pages support them. They are spokes. If a buyer is interested in a service, the site should help them find the proof, explanation and next step without sending them back to the menu.
The problem is that many websites create alternative structures by accident.
A page becomes important because half the site links to it. A topic looks like a specialism because the firm has written about it for years (or it’s one of the few areas the copywriter genuinely understands). A service looks weak because the main page exists, but nothing much supports it.
That pattern is one of the things Manticore, my proprietary content audit software, is built to reveal. The point isn’t to let software decide what a firm should say. It’s to make the existing website structure easier to discern – the one implied by internal links, URL patterns, page depth, categories and repeated themes, not just the one the menu claims.
Sometimes the process confirms what my client thought they had. Often, it finds something more awkward: a service the firm wants to grow, but has hidden in the cellar; a blog section that looks more important than the services it was meant to support; or a case study archive full of useful proof that never seems to appear where buyers actually need reassurance.
That is why an inventory isn’t enough. It can tell you what’s on the site, but only a content audit will ask whether the different pages are doing the right jobs, in the right places, for the firm as it is now.
Before you add more content…
Many professional services firms think the solution is to add more content. Sometimes it is.
A missing service page is still a missing service page. A new question may deserve a clear answer. A sector may need a proper explanation rather than a sentence about “unique challenges”, or some other phrase where meaning goes to die.
But more often, the immediate problem is the structure already implied by the site.
The important service exists, but the site doesn’t treat it as important. The proof exists, but sits too far away from the claim. The article attracts the right reader, then leaves them wandering.
Before writing another batch of pages or posts, it’s worth asking what the existing website structure is already telling clients.
Does it match your firm’s priorities? Does it make your strongest services easy to understand? Or does it connect useful explanations to relevant proof?
The answer usually sits in the pattern created by the pages and their relationships. It may support your firm as it is now, or it may belong to an earlier version of the business – like a bricked-up window that no one has got round to reopening.
Either way, it’s worth knowing before you build on top of it. My content audit service will show you what you’re really working with.
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