Are (ultra) flat site structures better for SEO?
-
Noticed that a high-profile site uses a very flat structure for there content. It essentially places most landing pages right under the root domain folder.
So a more conventional site might use this structure:
- www.widgets.com/landing-page-1/
- www.widgets.com/landing-page-1/landing-page-2/
- www.widgets.com/landing-page-1/landing-page-2/landing-page-3/
This site in question - a successful one - would deploy the same content like this:
So when you're clicking deeper into the nav. options the clicks always roll up to the "top level."
Top level pages are given more weight by SEs but conventional directory structures are also beneficial seen as ideal. Why would a site take the plunge and organize content in this way? What was the clincher?
-
What if your site is a large ecommerce site? I'm working with someone who just had their site rebuilt and none of their pages fall into a hierarchy category>category options> product. You go to the category page and then when you go to another, your url extension is completely unique. Is this going to hurt them in the long run?
Keep I'm already having them change some of the URLs because they are useless extensions that don't match the pages and are no good for SEO that way.
Should they seriously consider restructuring too?
Thanks!
-
I agree with these guys that the link structure is what matters. Some of my sites have pages 3 levels deep, but direct links from the top of the home page so they get plenty of link juice from that.
A good reason for a flat architecture is simply to have a short, sweet URL that's easy to remember and share.
It might also just be a byproduct of the CMS that they're using, where product or article pages are given top-level URLs, and category pages are just interstitial pages of links. One advantage of this is being able to re-categorize -- create new category pages and retire ones that aren't paying off -- without having to move/redirect the actual product pages. I do this a lot, for both article and product sites.
-
I haven't seen URL structures as a deal breaker when it comes to ranking, other than when it's full of session IDs, variable strings, and is a massively large URL. Mostly I consider using folder names for tracking purposes and try to keep them short for the most part. That way I can plug in a few to analytics and have a pretty good idea of that area of the site's performance. SEOmoz wrote a great article on this type of analysis at: http://www.seomoz.org/blog/a-powerful-analytics-tip-every-website-should-employ
You could accomplish the same thing with URL naming convention, but a folder would give you a quick way to organize and allow you to use shorter URL names. Back to the SEOmoz example, their folder names are extremely short, and sacrifice keyword targeting for the sake of length. As EGOL says, links are going to matter more than the word(s) in your folder name.
-
Top level pages are given more weight by SEs but conventional directory structures are also beneficial seen as ideal.
I am not so sure about this. I think that the weight is determined more by the linkage structure rather than the folder structure....
.... but would like to hear from anyone who has done actual testing on this.
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Why is this site ranking higher?
We've put a fair bit of effort into delivering value here: https://lewescountycars.co.uk/ But a search for "Lewes taxis" or "taxis Lewes" puts this site above us: https://www.lewestowntaxis.co.uk/ As you can you see, this is a tiny site that we outperform in most ways.... what can we do to rank above it that we haven't already done? Thanks in advance - Gerard.
Technical SEO | | Paul7301 -
What domain name do you think is better for SEO: sirocco-webdesign.com or sirocco-web-design.com?
Hello, I would appreciate it very much if you share with me your thoughts on what domain name I'd better pick out in terms of productive SEO: sirocco-webdesign.com or sirocco-web-design.com? I know hyphens are not good, but second domain looks better, I think.
Technical SEO | | kirupa0 -
What will be the future of seo ?
this question may sound like old one but i want to know something in depth. i mean will seo live forever ? Will i loose my seo job ? so just wanted to know what will be the future of seo ?
Technical SEO | | isolve1 -
AJAX and SEO
Hello team, Need to bounce a question off the group. We have a site that uses the .NET AJAX tool kit to toggle tabs on a page. Each tab has content and the content is drawn on page load. In other words, the content is not from an AJAX call, it is there from the start. The content sits in DIV tags which the javascript toggles - that's all. My customer hired an "SEO Expert" who is telling them that this content is invisible to search engines. I strongly disagree and we're trying to come to a conclusion. I understand that content rendered async via an AJAX call would not be spidered, however just using the AJAX (Javascript) to switch tabs will not affect the spiders finding the content in the markup. Any thoughts?
Technical SEO | | ChrisInColorado0 -
Does Google differentiate between a site with spammy link building practices from a victim of a negative SEO attack?
I've be tasked with figuring out how to recover our rankings as we are likely being hurt by an algorithmic penalty. I have no idea if this was the workings of a previously hired SEO or the result of negative SEO, **how does Google differentiate between a site with bad/spammy link building practices from a victim of a negative SEO attack? **
Technical SEO | | Syed_Raza0 -
Redirection Impact on SEO
Need help urgently. There is the situation [This is how is it working now]: 1. Have a global landing page [say when user types in www.mysite.com - takes user to the global landing page: [www.mysite.com/global/en.html]](http://www.mysite.com/global/en.html] ) 2. Users from this landing page can select a country on his/her choice and get redirected say: [www.mysite.com/us/en.html] Would like to change the functionality as below: 1. When user types in www.mysite.com 1a. Would find the location of the request based on GEO IP and if the request is coming from North America region then would redirect the users to: www.mysite.com/us/en.html 1b. If the request is from any other location/region then it would continue to work as it is currently working: take the user to the global landing page: www.mysite.com/global/en.html Would this change have any negative impact or not found by search engines from SEO perspective? If it does then what are the impacts and if does not then why not. If it does then what is the best possible way to address this request. Appriciate your help. Thanks, Koushik Roy
Technical SEO | | KoushikRoy0 -
SEO Tomfoolery
Oh Hai, I recently changed the permalink structure on my Wordpress based site, southwestbreaks.co.uk from the standard ?p=123 to a more SEO chummy /%postname%/. As a result, my site has completely dropped off the board for all my previously well ranked search phrases. Having since gotten into SEOmoz a bit more, I can see there are WP plugins available that apparently would've done this a lot more smoothly. I'd be most grateful if someone could explain if this drop off is just temporary, or have I somehow entered Google's shun book? The site has been like this for about 48 hours. Thanks, Tim
Technical SEO | | Southwesttim0 -
Delete old site but redirect domain to a new domain and site
I just have a quick query and I have a feeling about what the answer is so just wanted to see what you guys thought... Basically I am working on a client site. This client has a few other websites that are divisions of their company. However these divisions/websites are no longer used. They are wanting to delete the websites but redirect the domains to their name main website. They believe this will pass on SEO benefits as these old division sites are old and have a good PR and history. I'm unsure for DEFINITE, which way is correct?
Technical SEO | | Weerdboil0