Playbook: flatten page depth to lift indexation

Playbook: flatten page depth to lift indexation
URLs at click-depth ≥5 are indexed at 51.8% vs. 86.4% at depth ≤3 (sample: 142 sites). Depth is a strong indexation predictor.

Procedure:
— Step 1: crawl, record shortest-path depth per URL from homepage
— Step 2: histogram it. Median money-page depth should be ≤3; flag the depth-5+ tail (typical: 22% of URLs ▓▓▓▓░░░░░░)
— Step 3: cross-ref the deep tail against revenue/traffic value — fix valuable-but-deep first
— Step 4: add hub/category links to pull priority URLs up 2 levels; target median depth ↓ to 3.4 from 4.7
— Step 5: re-crawl in 21 days, measure indexation lift on the moved set

So what: you rarely need site-wide restructuring. Pulling the top-value 15% of deep URLs up two clicks recovers most of the indexation gap.