The two most common website navigation structures are flat sites and deep sites. Flat websites are websites that try to make each web page available with very few clicks. Deep websites are websites that use long paths to access specific pages on the site.

A deep website structure enables you to create very exact and targeted topical pages on your website. The disadvantage of a deep website structure is that website visitors and search engine crawlers take longer to find the content they are looking for.

A flat website structure makes it easier for website visitors and search engines to find all pages of your website. The fewer pages your visitors have to go through before finding the content they are looking for, the better.

Help your website visitors and search engine bots to get maximum results. All pages on your website should be accessible with a maximum of four clicks from the home page of your site.

In addition, the navigational elements on your website reflect the importance of the linked pages. It usually makes sense to create your website structure like this:

• Create an overview of all pages of your website.
• Break the content into core categories and create a top-level navigation that holds the different content types of your site.
• Create logical subcategories.
• If necessary, create another subcategory level.
• Link the targeted pages from the subcategory pages.

If you think about creating a public sitemap of your website so that your visitors can find all pages then your website navigation is not good enough.

Although a sitemap can help search engines and website visitors to find pages on your site, the regular navigation of your website should be so good that a sitemap is not needed.