Directory structure and SEO

[jaimie]

Hi,

This topic has probably gotten beaten to death several times, but with regard to directories specifically in GOOGLE -- let's say I have a product in the categories

Home Products > Kitchen > Blenders > Big Badass Blenders

My concern is that if I make the URL like this:
Home-Products/Kitchen/Blenders/Big-Badass-Blenders/Product-Name.html
... that it gets way too long. I can do two things:

List only the last category:
Big-Badass-Blenders/Product-Name.html

List 2 of the categories:
Blenders/Big-Badass-Blenders/Product-Name.html

The latter is slightly problematic because it totally disregards the actual purpose for directories -- i.e. without the full path, it doesn't actually provide structure. So my question, then, is, does GOOGLE actually look at the directory _STRUCTURE_ when analyzing your site? It's arbitrary for me, because I'm using mod-rewrite, but does it use the directories to actually organize/process information. Or should I just not give a crap ?

My choices are, though:
Full category / .. / .. / Product.html
Last category / Product.html
2nd to last category / last category / Product.html

[007mike]

Jaimie,

When a search engine spider crawls your website it will follow all of your "on-page" links. The directory structure does not matter as much as the "link structure" for your site ie how every page is connected together.

A good rule of thumb when creating directory names is to include your keywords in the name of the directory. I wouldn't worry too much about how long your URL is. It's more important that you give the search engine a good idea about what is contained in your directory.

eg if you have a bunch of webpages related to "keyword suggestion tools" I would make the directory name keyword-suggestion-tools.

You should also keep in mind that if your website structure is too complex you can alienate your user. Consider registering a new domain with the keywords in the domain name and splitting your content up into smaller more targeted sites. You can then link them all up via a portal site.

:rolleyes:

[jaimie]

I'm aware of the linking structure issues. The site is entirely dynamic. Basically, it's a matter of how to write my code that dictates how long the URLs are. I know keywords are important, so I'd like to get the category and subcategory names into the URL. For mod-rewrite and my scripts, all I need is the last category to derive all previous categories -- i.e.

A/B/C/PRODUCT

can really be

C/PRODUCT

or

B/C/PRODUCT

I'm just wondering if it matters at all anyway .... am I beating a dead horse?

[AussieWebmaster]

I have seen 1032 as the limit to the characters in the url... though if not exactly right it is a good reference to start from.

[telNform]

Also, be careful not have empty directories .. basically, if you have a directory then there should be a file(s) within it. Do not create directories just to create directories - that is pointless.

Scott Polk
telNform

[Marcia]

Frankly, I've been wondering if it's a good idea nowadays to have too many hyphens in filepaths, so I've been trying to keep those to a minimum - though I don't care for having directory structures too deep, since different search engines use different crawl patterns.

But aside from many hyphens, I wonder if some engines consider keywords in URL paths (aside from Google) as far as how important the sequence is, whether it's just the words in the URL or an exact match for the phrases.

[PhilC]

So my question, then, is, does GOOGLE actually look at the directory _STRUCTURE_ when analyzing your site?The short answer is no.

The longer answer is that search engines, including Google, only look at pages; i.e. they don't analyse a site's link structure. When looking at pages, they sometimes look at the links coming into it, and the links going out of it, but that's not looking at a whole structure - it's only looking at a single page and the links associated with it.

[nesalc]

The short answer is no.

The longer answer is that search engines, including Google, only look at pages; i.e. they don't analyse a site's link structure. When looking at pages, they sometimes look at the links coming into it, and the links going out of it, but that's not looking at a whole structure - it's only looking at a single page and the links associated with it.

At some time is the past, don't recall when, but within the last 6 months, one of the "advanced search" features at msn was to exclude pages from a certain depth in the directory structure from the search results.

I just checked msn, but can't find it now.

But to me it indicates that they may use the directory depth as a parameter when ranking results.

/Claus

[AussieWebmaster]

At some time is the past, don't recall when, but within the last 6 months, one of the "advanced search" features at msn was to exclude pages from a certain depth in the directory structure from the search results.

I just checked msn, but can't find it now.

But to me it indicates that they may use the directory depth as a parameter when ranking results.

/Claus

I have not seen this but could be worth checking. Directory pages generally get pages listed by content on page etc.