Folder depth ≠ click depth. Stop confusing them.

Folder depth ≠ click depth. Stop confusing them.
Client panicked that /a/b/c/d/product was "too deep for SEO." Wanted to flatten every URL. That's 10,000 redirects for a non-problem.
Here's the truth:
— Google doesn't count slashes in the URL as a ranking penalty. A 5-folder URL ranks fine.
— What matters is CLICK depth: how many links from the homepage to reach the page.
— A URL can be /a/b/c/d/product but sit 2 clicks deep if your nav links straight to it.
The move:
— Left the URLs alone.
— Added hub pages and "featured" modules so deep products are 2-3 clicks from home.
— Measured click depth with a crawler's "crawl depth" column, not by counting slashes.
Watch the panic-flatten urge. Restructuring URLs for cosmetic depth is the most common waste of a migration budget.