Pillar-hub linking vs flat sibling mesh for crawl flow

Pillar-hub linking vs flat sibling mesh for crawl flow

Two internal-linking architectures for scaled pages. They distribute crawl and equity differently.

1. Pillar-hub: hubs link down to leaf pages, leaves link up to hubs. Concentrates authority on hubs, gives bots clear entry points, shallow depth.
— Use when some pages matter much more than others (category hubs).
2. Flat sibling mesh: every page links to many peers, no strong hierarchy. Even equity spread, but bots wander and important pages don't stand out.
— Use only when pages are genuinely equal in value (rare).
3. Decision rule: unequal value → pillar-hub. Equal value → mesh. Most pSEO sites are unequal, so default hub.
4. Guardrail: keep every indexable page within 3 clicks of the homepage. Gate: crawl-depth report, zero pages deeper than 4.
5. Guardrail: hubs must be in the sitemap and the main nav, not orphaned.

Rollback: link graph is regenerated from the taxonomy.

Ship gate: don't publish until all boxes are checked.