Site structure / IA out of balance? What does that mean to SEO?

[McTaggart]

I often see commentators mentioning out of balance site structures/IA but what does this actually mean in SEO terms?

For example, Yoast advises: "If one category grows much larger than others, your site’s pyramid could be thrown off balance." Neil Patel advises "Try to balance the amount of subcategories within each category. Basically, try to keep it approximately even. If one main category has fourteen subcategories, while another main category has only three subcategories, this could become a little unbalanced."

Does this have any direct influence on SEO (crawlability, etc.) or is this more a UX issue? I look forward to receiving your feedback.

[MrWhippy]

Hi Luke,

Disclaimer first: I have not carried out any testing on this, so this is just a theory.

After reading your question, my initial thought process is that by having more subcategories or content in one category you are suggesting to the search engines that this is your primary area of focus.

Think about it from Google or Bings point of view, if you have 50 subcategories with 10 posts each for blue widgets and only have 10 subcategories with 5 posts each for red widgets what would you think?

I would look at a site like that and think oh these guys do blue widgets, and maybe a few red widgets.

It is an interesting concept though and might be worth testing.

Steve

[McTaggart]

Hi Steve and thanks for the feedback - it would definitely be interesting to check - I can't imagine this is a huge issue on uncomplicated sites without thousands of pages, but who knows... testing is needed.  All the best, Luke