Crawl depth (3-click rule)What it checks and how to fix it

What it checks

Builds the link graph between the audited pages and walks it from the home page. Warns when any audited page is more than 3 clicks away from the home page, or cannot be reached from it by following links at all. Passes when every page is within 3 clicks. Needs at least two audited pages, one of them the home page.

Why it matters

Crawlers find and prioritise pages by following links from the home page, and the deeper a page sits the less often it is crawled and the less internal authority it receives. Visitors give up on pages buried four or five clicks deep too. Pages reachable only through the sitemap or search are the first to drop out of the index.

How to fix it

Bring important pages closer to the home page: link them from the main navigation or the footer, add category or hub
pages that list their children, and link related pages to each other.

<!-- A hub page that puts every guide two clicks from home -->
<nav aria-label="Guides">
  <ul>
    <li><a href="/guides/dmarc-setup">DMARC setup</a></li>
    <li><a href="/guides/spf-record">SPF record</a></li>
    <li><a href="/guides/mta-sts">MTA-STS</a></li>
  </ul>
</nav>

Paginated archives that only expose "next" links push old items deeper with every new post. Add category pages,
tags or a link to page N to keep them within reach.