<b>Six clicks deep is where rankings go to die</b>

<b>Six clicks deep is where rankings go to die</b>

Inherited a B2B catalog buried like /products/industrial/pumps/centrifugal/stainless/model-x. Six folders. Money pages sat at depth 5-6 and never ranked.

The move:
— Pulled the real money pages up to depth 2: /centrifugal-pumps/
— Kept the deep folder as a category hub but linked the product directly from it AND from the homepage block
— 301'd the old deep URLs to the flat ones

Click depth, not URL string length, is what matters. A page 2 clicks from home with internal links beats a page 5 clicks down every time.

Ship it, but map every old URL before you redirect. One unmapped 404 on a deep folder takes a whole branch down with it.