You can have brilliant content and strong links, but if your architecture is messy, Google wastes crawl on low-value URLs, users get lost, and your best pages sit too deep to build momentum. The fix is not a new plugin or a fresh theme. It is making sure your site has a structure that search engines can understand and humans actually enjoy using.
And yes, this matters commercially. In November 2025, 28.6% of retail sales in Great Britain were made online, with average weekly internet sales around £2.7 billion. That is a lot of demand flowing through digital journeys where friction costs money.
What “good architecture” means on a large site
A strong architecture does 3 jobs at the same time:
- It helps users find what they need quickly
- It helps search engines discover and understand your content
- It pushes authority (internal link equity) towards the pages that drive results
For large sites, you are typically balancing:
- Topical clarity (so Google knows what each section is about)
- Crawl efficiency (so bots are not stuck in endless parameter space)
- Click-depth control (so your priority pages are not buried)
If you are already running audits and seeing crawl or indexation weirdness, this is the kind of thing Totally Digital bakes into their audit approach.
Hubs: your traffic and authority distributors
A hub is a strong page that sits near the top of a topic area and links out to the most important supporting pages.
Think of a hub like a well-organised shop floor:
- It explains the section
- It presents the choices
- It routes people to the right aisle fast
For SEO, hubs do something else: they concentrate relevance. If your hub is clearly about a theme, and it links to pages that deepen that theme, you are making it much easier for search engines to map your topical authority.
Where hubs usually live:
- Category pages (ecommerce)
- Service overview pages (B2B)
- Pillar guides (content heavy sites)
If you want a simple example of how a services hub can be organised, look at Totally Digital’s services.
Then zoom in to a section like Organic Marketing.
That is the pattern you want to replicate on your own site: clear entry point, clear choices, and natural routes deeper.
Silos: structure that prevents chaos
A silo is just a way of grouping related content so it supports itself, rather than fighting other sections for attention.
On large sites, silos matter because “everything links to everything” often turns into:
- Cannibalisation (multiple pages chasing the same intent)
- Diluted relevance (Google cannot tell what the section is really about)
- Over-crawling of low-value variants (filters, tags, internal search)
A practical silo usually looks like:
- Hub page (the overview)
- Supporting sub-pages (specific services, subcategories, guides)
- Deep pages (product pages, long-tail content, FAQs)
- Supporting sub-pages (specific services, subcategories, guides)
The key is that links mostly flow within the silo, with intentional cross-links only where it genuinely helps the user.
If you are a B2B site, siloing your service lines is often the fastest win. For example, a B2B SEO section should be its own little world.
Click-depth control: the difference between “exists” and “performs”
Click depth is simply how many clicks it takes to reach a page from your start point (usually the homepage, sometimes a hub).
On large sites, pages that are 5, 6, 7 clicks deep can still get indexed, but they often struggle to:
- Get crawled frequently
- Accumulate internal authority
- Rank consistently (especially for competitive terms)
You do not need every page 2 clicks from the homepage. You do need your priority pages (the ones tied to revenue) to sit closer to the surface.
A realistic target for most large sites:
- Tier 1 pages (money pages): 1 to 3 clicks
- Tier 2 pages (supporting content): 2 to 4 clicks
- Tier 3 pages (deep inventory or long-tail): 3 to 5 clicks
If you are not sure which pages are currently too deep, pair crawl data with real outcomes. That is where analytics earns its keep.
How to build hubs that do not turn into bloated directories
A hub page is not a dumping ground. If it is just a wall of links, users bounce and Google learns nothing.
Instead, give each hub:
- A short intro that frames the topic and intent
- A clean set of primary options (your main sub-pages)
- Secondary links for long-tail depth (guides, FAQs, related tools)
- A next step (enquiry, demo, sign-up, product browse)
This is where SEO and UX overlap. If your hubs are built like “SEO pages” rather than navigation pages, they rarely work well.
Internal linking that supports hubs and silos
Once your structure is right, internal linking becomes much simpler because it is not random. You are building “paths”:
- Hub to sub-page (mandatory)
- Sub-page back to hub (often via breadcrumbs)
- Sub-page to sibling pages (where it genuinely helps)
- Deep page to its parent (category, service, or guide)
What you want to avoid:
- Sitewide footer link lists that try to fix everything
- Tag pages linking endlessly to unrelated content
- Automated related-post widgets that have no topical logic
If you want a solid baseline for how crawling and discovery actually work, Totally Digital’s guide on crawling, indexing and ranking is a good refresher.
Large-site architecture problems you can spot quickly
Here are the patterns that usually show up first:
Too many competing “category” types
Example: category pages, collections, tags, and filters all trying to rank for the same theme.
Fix: pick 1 primary taxonomy per intent type, then demote or noindex the rest.
Faceted navigation creating crawl and index bloat
If your filters generate infinite URL combinations, they will eat your crawl budget and bury your real priorities.
Orphaned pages
Pages that exist, but are barely linked internally, tend to drift. They might stay indexed, but they rarely perform.
Fix: either link them properly within the silo, consolidate them, or remove them.
If you want a broader list of checks you can run alongside an architecture review, this is a useful companion.
And for content mapping inside silos.
Make architecture a business decision, not just an SEO project
The best large-site architectures are built around commercial intent:
- What do you sell
- Who do you sell it to
- What questions block conversion
- What pages support the journey
Even newer search behaviour (AI answers, generative results) still depends on your structure being easy to parse
Next Steps
If your site is large, your architecture is your SEO foundation. Hubs give you strong entry points, silos stop your content from competing with itself, and click-depth control keeps your priority pages close enough to matter.
If you want help tightening your structure, reducing crawl waste, and building a hub and silo model that supports growth, start here.
If you’re tired of traffic that doesn’t convert, Totally Digital is here to help. Start with technical seo and a detailed seo audit to fix performance issues, indexing problems, and lost visibility. Next, scale sustainably with organic marketing and accelerate results with targeted paid ads. Get in touch today and we’ll show you where the quickest wins are.