Architecture
Architecture analyses the URL structure, HTTP response headers (caching, security, compression), breadcrumb navigation, and anchor text diversity of internal links.
Details
URL structure
A well-structured URL is short, descriptive, and uses hyphens to separate words. Best practices:
• Keep URLs under 115 characters
• Limit depth to 3–4 path segments (e.g., /category/subcategory/page)
• Avoid query parameters, uppercase letters, underscores, and long numeric IDs
• Use descriptive slugs containing keywords
Deep or messy URLs signal poor site architecture and can reduce crawl efficiency.
Breadcrumb navigation
Breadcrumbs show the user's position in the site hierarchy (Home > Category > Page). They help both users and search engines understand site structure.
The audit checks for breadcrumbs in HTML (nav elements with 'breadcrumb' class or aria-label) and in JSON-LD (BreadcrumbList schema). Missing breadcrumbs are flagged as an info-level issue.
HTTP headers audit
HTTP response headers affect caching, security, and SEO:
• Cache-Control — controls browser and CDN caching. Missing = no caching.
• Content-Encoding — gzip or brotli compression reduces transfer size.
• HSTS (Strict-Transport-Security) — forces HTTPS. Missing = security warning.
• X-Content-Type-Options — prevents MIME-type sniffing.
• Content-Security-Policy — prevents XSS and injection attacks.
• Server / X-Powered-By — leaking server info is a minor security concern.
The audit calculates a security headers score based on how many recommended headers are present.
Anchor text diversity
Anchor text diversity measures how varied the clickable text of internal links is. Low diversity (many links with the same text) suggests poor internal linking.
The audit analyses all internal links and flags:
• Empty anchors (links with no visible text or image)
• Generic anchors ('click here', 'read more') that provide no context
• Low diversity ratio (< 50% unique anchors when > 10 links exist)
Metrics
| Metric | Description |
|---|---|
| URL length | Total character count of the page URL. |
| URL depth | Number of path segments in the URL (e.g., /a/b/c = depth 3). |
| SEO-friendly URL | Whether the URL is clean (no parameters, reasonable depth and length). |
| Breadcrumbs found | Whether breadcrumb navigation is present in HTML or Schema. |
| Navigation elements | Number of <nav> elements found on the page. |
| Security headers score | Percentage of recommended security headers present (0–100%). |
| Cache-Control | Whether a Cache-Control header is set and its value. |
| Compression | Whether content is served with gzip or brotli compression. |
| Anchor diversity | Percentage of unique anchor texts among internal links. |
| Empty anchors | Number of internal links with no anchor text. |
| Generic anchors | Number of links using uninformative text like 'click here' or 'read more'. |