Question about web site structure

[johnshearer]

Is there an SEO advantage for individual pages to be in sub folders vs not being in a folder? Of course site managemnt is easier with folders if you have 100;s of pages...clearly a shorter URL is easier for humans to naviagte.

store.com/gadgets

store.com/lasers

vs.

store.com/gadgets/lasers

[KeriMorgret]

I'm not sure I understand your question John, and the second URL is a 404. Could you expand your question a bit? Thanks!

[johnshearer]

Hi Keri and community,

So is it a link juice mistake on my site

www.shearerpainting.com

www.shearerpainting.com/recyclepaint.index

I created the sub folder and landing page specifically for a new campaign "recycle paint" with video and content and links

[KeriMorgret]

I've gone ahead and marked this thread as answered, even though we haven't heard from John. Thanks for your great recap!

[RyanPurkey]

Hi John.  I'm surprised this question isn't considered answered yet as the group seems to touch on all the bases. Here's a recap:

1. Richard Getz highlights the ability to add keywords via folders but cautions against adding too many folders (historically due to crawling issues).
2. David Lenehan cautions against too many folders causing duplicate content issues and ungainly website architecture.
3. Keri Morgret highlights the usefulness of folders in Analytics to help track specific portions of content.  The moz also discusses this in their excellent post: http://www.seomoz.org/blog/a-powerful-analytics-tip-every-website-should-employ

"By segmenting out traffic to URLs that include /blog/ and those that include /ugc/ (YOUmoz), we can see when/where/how each section is rising or falling in traffic and contributing to the overall site's performance."

4. Fatwallet cautions against spam negating benefits in either and emphasizes linking as driving more value regardless.
5. Aaron Dicks recommends a CMS to give you strength and flexibility in organizing your content.
6. While Pashmina reminds us of the usefulness of redirects when curtailing duplicate content or sending lost link strength to a page in greater need.

And finally since you were asking about domain\folder\page vs domain\page you're not going to run into subdomain issues.  If a short folder category makes since in analytics it's definitely worth it.  Just look at the URL above... we're in the 'q' folder.  Hope that helps.

[KeriMorgret]

John,

Did any of these responses answer your question, or do you still have more questions? If you could add a comment or mark a helpful response, that'd be great!

[aarondicks]

There are a lot of answers on here with regards to .html files and folders. The most efficient and easily-manageable solution here is to migrate to a good Content Management System that can handle categorys and page parents (I prefer Wordpress)

Products can be categorised one or two deep (suggested max for Search Engines) and URL's will reflect the product description. I.e is the item is a widget or type foo, being in url www.example.com/foo/widget/product-name would be a great structure, as both foo and widget might be part of the search term for the product, and they will also appear on the product page naturally as you describe the product.

This also helps the Keyword cannibalisation problem, as you will be able to see through administration that there are multiple pages doing the same thing.

Essentially in answer to your question, go one or two deep if it will help your users. Don't go more than 2 as Search Engines may not crawl that far if you have a young/non-authorative domain.

Hope this helps,

Aaron

[Syed1]

I am gonna vote up with 1 folder level. There is no evidence of it, but its possibly that the juice would not pass through as well if there are many directories/sub-directories

[flowsimple]

I agree with Richard and Joel. No more than 3 levels deep for categories. And I'd like to add, that it's good to create redirects for alternative categories or links. If a product can belong to 2 sub categories, have both links work. eg. domain.com/category/subcategory-primary/product.html -> would be main link domain.com/category/subcategory-secondary/product.html -> would redirect to above And while this is not necessarily an SEO advantage, having clean, short and organized categories helps create a good user experience and easy way finding for your users and leads to higher conversion rates.

[Fatwallet]

That's a really good point.

I'm glad GA form fields accept regular expressions

[KeriMorgret]

Don't overlook the usefulness of folders when it comes to Google Analytics. Lunametrics has a post on designing a site that is friendly with GA at http://www.lunametrics.com/blog/2010/09/22/designing-google-analytics-friendly-site/.

[Fatwallet]

Google is going to trust your link structure more than the subdirectories in the url.

Make your urls clean, try to get a good keyword in there, but DON'T stuff and make them obnoxious and spammy.

There IS typically an advantage to a flatter architecture, but if the content is rich and the longer tail potential is high a deeper architecture will serve just fine.

[DavidLenehan]

Too many sub folders isn't good for SEO and you can have problems with duplicate content.  Personally I would go with the first option. I try to ensure products have the following URL structure

store.com/product-laser-gadget.html

You need to avoid the following situation;

store.com/gadget/product-laser-gadget.html

store.com/laser/product-laser-gadget.html

store.com/gadget/laser/product-laser-gadget.html

[johnshearer]

Thanks Joel can you give me an example?

www.donuts/glazed/chocalate glazed

[Getz.pro]

If Susan does not get you some backlinks, nothing will

[johnshearer]

Richard you are going to laugh...so I just made a new video and added sitemap, and I am jacked up about getting another keyword in so i made

http://www.shearerpainting.com/PaintColors/susanmarinello.php

but my HTML is so poori cant figure out menu's page architecture, blah , blah so I tempoarily put this up:

http://www.shearerpainting.com/susanmarinello.php

[Getz.pro]

None that I can think of.

If you have categories, it not only allows the use of another keyword, but you get to make a landing page for that keyword. domain.com/category/index.php would be used for keywords and also redirecting link juice once a product was deleted as explained here: (scroll to the bottom)

http://www.seomoz.org/q/what-do-you-do-about-links-to-constantly-moving-pages

When you link build, you can use these landing pages to point links to. Also good for link baiting.

There are several reasons to have these types of pages. It would depend on what your site is composed of, but you can add videos, how-tos, related blog post, etc.

All of which get a user in a direction, attract links, and help get link juice to deeper pages.

[johnshearer]

Thanks Richard,  Is there any advantge to have all my pages only go 1 deep?

[Getz.pro]

Sure, the most obvious is the use of a keyword, but don't go more than 3 deep. domain.com/category1/category2/product.html