Optimizing your site’s structure isn’t just about good design — it’s about making sure search engines and users can easily find your most important pages. One of the most overlooked yet powerful aspects of technical SEO is click depth.
Click depth refers to how many steps or clicks a user or search engine bot, must take to reach a specific page starting from the homepage.
Depth 0–1: Strong visibility means pages are easy to find and often crawled.
Depth 2–3: Acceptable. Pages are still discoverable, but have slightly less authority flow.
Depth 4+: Is too deep and at risk of being crawled rarely or ignored by search engines.
What Makes Click Depths Important?
Click depth is a key factor in helping search engines understand which pages on your website are most important.
Pages that are closer to the homepage tend to carry more weight, while pages buried deeper may receive less attention from Google, especially if your site isn’t highly authoritative.
Typically, pages beyond three clicks from the homepage are crawled less frequently, unless your site has strong overall authority.
Click Depth and User Experience
Click depth doesn’t just matter for SEO, it also impacts your visitors. Users expect to find information quickly.
A site that requires multiple clicks to reach desired content can frustrate visitors and increase bounce rates.
How to Identify and Fix Crawl Depth Issues with Screaming Frog
1. Start Crawling Your Website
Open Screaming Frog SEO Spider and enter your website URL address.
Click Start to begin crawling. The tool will act like a search engine, scanning your website’s pages and collecting important data, including page depth.
2. Check Crawl Depth Values
Once the crawl is complete, navigate to the Site Structure or Internal tab. Find the column labeled Crawl Depth.
This indicates the number of clicks it takes to reach each page from your homepage. Sorting pages by depth helps you see which content is easy to access and which is buried too far.
3. Spot Pages That Need Attention
Pages that are four or more clicks away from your homepage can be problematic. These pages are less likely to be crawled frequently by search engines and may get lower rankings, even if the content is valuable.
4. Analyze Why These Pages Are Deep
Examine the internal linking structure:
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Are these pages linked from the main navigation or footer?
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Do they have enough internal links from other relevant pages?
5. Fix Crawl Depth Problems
To bring deep pages closer to your homepage:
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Add Internal Links: Link from high-authority pages like your homepage or key pillar pages.
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Update Navigation Menus: Include important pages in the main menu, footer, or sidebar.
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Reduce Intermediate Clicks: Remove unnecessary pages or combine content to shorten the path to important pages.
In summary, managing click depth helps both users and search engines.
By keeping your important pages close to the homepage and maintaining a clean internal linking structure, you make your site easier to crawl, navigate, and rank.
