methodology / SEO & Discoverability / #43
Internal link depth (clicks from homepage to deepest content)
#43 · Recommended · Web Quality · weighted · SEO & Discoverability · weight 0.7% · impl implemented · method v1.2.0
Web Quality factor
This factor is part of Web Quality — the weighted 0..100 score that sits above Web Standards. Its weight depends on what kind of site is being measured. Web Standards items take priority; this factor only enters the score once Web Standards passes.
- Base weight
- 0.6 applied to every site type unless overridden below
- Why this weight
- Internal link depth — readers shouldn't need 6 clicks to reach old content.
Per-site-type overrides
| Site type | Weight | Δ vs base |
|---|---|---|
| E-commerce | 0.8 | +0.2 |
| News / Publisher | 0.9 | +0.3 |
| Personal site | 0.3 | -0.3 |
| Media / Streaming | 0.8 | +0.2 |
Site types not listed inherit the base weight.
What this means for your business
If a customer or Google has to click five or six times from your homepage to find a service or product page, most never make it. Important pages should be two or three clicks away, max.
Plain title: How easy it is to reach your deepest pages
What we measure
Pages buried 5+ clicks deep get crawled less often by Google and rank worse. Important content should be reachable in 3 clicks or fewer from your homepage.
How to improve your score
Add navigation entries, build sitemap pages, and link related content from existing pages so deep URLs are reachable in fewer hops.
Facts
Implementation notes
BFS crawl from the homepage to depth 3, then count reachable URLs vs URLs in the sitemap.
Scoring
Scoring formulas are versioned with the methodology. The current method (v1.2.0) maps raw measurements to pass, warn, fail. Factor weights determine how much each contributes to the composite — see the methodology index for the full table.
Version history
| Version | Change | Date |
|---|---|---|
| v1.2.0 | Factor introduced. Status: live. Scoring impl: implemented. | 2026-04-25 |