The Impact of Hierarchical and Flat Site Structure on SEO: An Analytical Review

Google's Gary Illyes answered questions about site structure, explaining why a hierarchical site structure is good for SEO and when you can use a flat site structure. Illyes made a compelling case for why a hierarchical site structure is a good choice, and why a flat site structure is suitable for simple websites.

"I think it depends a lot on the size of the site. For a large site, it's probably better to have a hierarchical structure; it allows you to do fancy things in just one section, and also allows search engines to potentially treat different sections differently, especially when it comes to indexing. For example, having a /news/ section for news content and /archives/ for older content will allow search engines to index /news/ faster than another directory. If you put everything in one catalog, it is hardly possible."

🚀 The hierarchical structure of the site means the organization of the site according to the principle from general to specific. The home page represents the highest level of the hierarchy, and the categories and web pages below it become more and more specific. This way of organizing allows publishers to create categories based on topics, which SEOs used to call "topics" or "thematic topics" but are now simply called topics.

• 📌 The hierarchical structure of the site allows Google to treat different sections of the site differently, including treating one section of the website as a news topic. Each category of a web page can be a separate topic, which helps Google to divide the site into sections and know what each of them is about.
• 📌 The flat site structure means that each page is linked from the home page, making the entire site accessible in one click from the home page. This structure is called flat because if you visualize the link structure, it will be flat, with all elements linked at the same level below the home page.