Page too deep or without internal links

The finding goes to a live page (other than the home page) that is more than 3 clicks from the home page, or that has not a single inbound internal link. Either condition is enough. Both values live in config/seo.json under seo.SEO-12 (max_click_depth: 3, min_incoming_internal_links: 1), are marked PROPOSAL, and the report gives the actual depth and link count.

It is evaluated only on a full crawl, never on a sample; otherwise “nothing links to it” would come out almost every time just because we never fetched the page holding the link.

How it differs from SIT-01 and SIT-02 in the core set: SIT-01 covers only pages that are in the sitemap and unlinked. SIT-02 covers depth, but only for content with at least 150 words. SEO-12 has neither restriction: it applies to short pages and to pages outside the sitemap. It is therefore the broadest of the three and the one that most often reports things that are fine.

What the check does not do: it does not count inbound links from other sites, does not distinguish a navigation link from a footer link, and does not judge whether a page belongs deep. The finding is page-level; severity is warning.

For visibility in AI answers we have no documented effect. And click depth is, on top of that, one of the most over-rated numbers in all of SEO, so let us be precise.

Google documents no click-depth limit. Not three, not any. The number in our configuration is a convention from practice marked as a proposal pending revision, not a search engine's threshold.

What is documented: a page must be discovered to be indexed, and it must be indexed to appear in AI answers; Google has the second half in its own documentation. Depth relates to discovery indirectly: the further away content sits, the likelier a limited crawl never reaches it.

We do not claim that internal linking boosts a page's “authority”. Domain authority, backlinks and domain age have no documented support in the context of AI visibility and we keep them out of the score.

The practical conclusion, and it applies here more than anywhere: go through the list and feel free to ignore part of it. A 2019 archive five clicks deep is probably right where it belongs. The finding earns its keep where something is buried that should not have been.

When many pages appear at once, do not fix them one by one; it is a signal about the structure of the site, not about pages:

• Pagination is the commonest cause. A listing ten items to a page means older content sits on page fifteen, and everything on it is deep. The answer is a hub by topic or year, not a longer listing.
• Too many category levels: three levels of nesting plus the page is four clicks before you start.
• Content reachable only through on-site search. A crawler will not fill in your search box; anything reachable only that way does not exist for it.

When the list holds a few individual pages, adding a link from wherever a visitor would look is enough: from the category, from a hub, from a related article. The link must be a real <a href>; an element that calls a script on click is not followed by a crawler.