How should site architecture be simplified on sites with limited crawl budget?

Short answer: Simplification means deliberately reducing the crawlable URL count and click depth: close URL spaces that produce no value, consolidate near-duplicate pages, and make priority pages reachable from the homepage in few clicks.

Where to simplify

• Faceted navigation: block worthless filter combinations from crawling with robots.txt patterns; consolidate valuable combinations with canonicals.
• Parameter cleanup: remove sorting and tracking parameters from internal links.
• Thin content: merge near-duplicate pages with 301s; retire permanently dead content with 410.
• Infinite spaces: block generative areas such as calendar pages and internal search results from crawling.
• Sitemap hygiene: keep only indexable URLs returning 200; lastmod must reflect reality.
• Hub pages: raise internal link density toward priority content and leave no orphan pages.

Track the effect from two sources: in log analysis the crawl share of priority pages should rise, and in the Search Console Crawl Stats report discovery waste should fall. Architecture decisions are defended with that data, not with guesses.