My next question: we’re redeveloping a site, which currently does not have index.html in the root folder as its home page (home is http://www.simonesgallery.com/estore/customer/). We intended to change that, but I got the following feedback from our developer:

"As per the SEO practices, it is always good to have a detailed url like http://www.simonesgallery.com/estore/customer/
because it tell search engine that it must/may be a store and if somebody is searching for a estore chances are good for better serp page."

I haven’t heard quite that point before. That the home page itself should be better off at an “estore-looking” address, even if it’s in a subfolder. It violates the rule of thumb to keep important pages at the root level, so I’m wondering if this is a special case that trumps that rule.

Yes, generally top level pages are seen as more important. But you will find plenty of lower level pages rank just as well.

The home/default/root page definitely should be at the top level if you can do it. That's your most important page. Don't bury it.

Saying things like estore in your URL text really doesn't tell a search engine that you're a store. Some will extract the text and determine that among many other words, you also seem to be relevant to "estore" as well. But the main way they'll know if you are a store, such as to list you in Froogle or Yahoo Shopping, is if you look and act like a store with products, prices, online order forms. Or if you directly submit a feed to them.

"As per the SEO practices, it is always good to have a detailed url like http://www.simonesgallery.com/estore/customer/
because it tell search engine that it must/may be a store and if somebody is searching for a estore chances are good for better serp page."That is not so at all.

In some cases there are static pages at root level that are optimized and lead customers into the cart, but there is NO reason why there can't be an index page in the root directory.

This is the same question that was asked asked in the Google forum, and there is a problem with how the redirection is being done, as shown in the reply given in the other thread

http://forums.searchenginewatch.com/showthread.php?t=6448

There are problems with how it's set up now.

Hi Marcia - please see my reply at http://forums.searchenginewatch.com/showthread.php?t=6448 - trying to understand what the redirect problem is...