URL structure
Before you actually start filling your site, decide upon a structure for your stie, i.e. your URL's. It makes it easier to create your site, especially for larger sites. Also it can prevent you from having to re-structure your site lateron. Restructuring your site could lead to changing actual URL's, which could have negative impact in the search engines.
Avoid deep link structures
Avoid going to deep with your URL structure. You should not go further then 2 levels deep. Going deeper then this is first of all confusing for users, but also makes the purpose of the site less visible for search engines. Some examples:
- Bad: https://joomla-seo.net/joomla/seo/keywords/joomla-specific/keyword1 (=5 levels)
- Good: https://joomla-seo.net/site-speed/jch-plugin (=2 levels)
Of course there may be exceptions where this is hard to achieve, like large webshops or product catalogues.
Avoid more then 7 menu-items per menu
As well as avoiding deep link structures, you should limit the number of items per menu. Users often get confused or bored when more then 7 menu items are visible in a menu, and confused users often leave the site (=increased bounce-rate = bad SEO rankings).
Instead of stuffing all your menu-items in one menu, you should either use sub-menu's, or fly-out menu's (make sure they work on mobile devices).