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    4. Root directory vs. subdirectories

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    Root directory vs. subdirectories

    Technical SEO
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    • nyc-seo
      nyc-seo last edited by

      Hello.

      How much more important does Google consider pages in the root directory relative to pages in a subdirectory? Is it best to keep the most important pages of a site in the root directory?

      Thanks!

      1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
      • Cyrus-Shepard
        Cyrus-Shepard last edited by

        Howdy nyc-seo,

        This is a really good question with lots of implications. Although there's no single "right" answer, there are a few things you might want to consider:

        1. Subfolders are good for organizational purposes and as such can help structure your content. For example, SEOmoz puts all the blog content under seomoz.org/blog
        2. Subfolders can contain keywords that help with CTR and possibly with rankings. This may be good in certain situations, like in ecommerce. i.e. example.com/bird-feeders/hummingbirds
        3. That said, shorter domains tend to perform better in search results, and you want to avoid keyword stuffing in your URLs.
        4. Also, too many subfolders and you can run into some crawling issues. In these cases, it's best to keep your site architecture as "flat" as possible, without too many additional layers of sub-directories.

        Some additional resources that may help:

        • http://www.seomoz.org/blog/understanding-root-domains-subdomains-vs-subfolders-microsites
        • http://www.seomoz.org/blog/site-architecture-for-seo

        Hope this helps! Best of luck with your SEO.

        1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 2
        • nyc-seo
          nyc-seo @JawwadQD last edited by

          Thank you.

          1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
          • JawwadQD
            JawwadQD last edited by

            Google Does consider pages more important in the root dir as compare to sub directories as far as i think!

            nyc-seo 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
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