Website directory structure

[Mikejf]

I'm about to re-design my website after advice on having links on the home page.

My site will have several pages - Home - About us etc.etc.

My question is what is the bast way to structure the pages.

for example...

www.mysite.co.uk/index.htm
www.mysite.co.uk/aboutus.html
www.mysite.co.uk/contactus.htm

or..

www.mysite.co.uk/index.htm
www.mysite.co.uk/aboutus/index.htm
www.mysite.co.uk/contactus/index.htm

Anyone have any thoughts?

Many Thanks

 

[ScottB]

It doesn't really matter to be honest. The sub folders in this example are unecessary so just using files in the root directory would be fine. That said, I've heard that using /folder/index.htm means that you could later change to /folder/index.php and Google would be smart enough to realise they are the same file (so if change your site in the future you don't need to worry too much about search engines).

For SEO purposes, I would usually go with /product-type/product-name.htm - grouping product types in their own folder is a good way to add keywords to the URL. Not a pre-requisite for success though.

Another area to consider is if you need to monitor certain types of content (either via search engines or via analytics tools). Using sub folders to contain certain content types can be useful to group stats together. For example, you might want to know how many people visit your /sales/ pages or your /company-info/ pages.

But in the grand scheme of things, all this stuff might not really be a concern for you so the choice is really down to how you want to organise your files on the server.

Scott

 

[fisicx]

As it's a simple site just shove them all in the root.

It's going to make it so much easier to update the internal links as all you need to do is set up index.html and then do a 'save as' for all the other pages. vwalla sorted.

 

[NMHancock]

Hi Mike,

I echo the sentiments of the other members on here, however one word of caution if you decide to go down the folder and sub folder root, DO NOT get carried away, Google is not a big fan of pages with lots of trailing slashes, one or two is okay as its sensible to organise data, but never have 4 or more traling slashes.

Hope this helps

Neil M Hancock

 

[nass]

Gentlemen, I'll have to agree to disagree. My experience is that site architecture and structure can have a large impact on SEO. I've seen dozens of sites go t1tsup after a "redesign". OWG made a good post about this very point which could be a decent starting point for you.

 

[NMHancock]

...I've seen dozens of sites go t1tsup after a "redesign"...

Hi Nass

I agree re-design's can have negative affects on your websites rankings, and i too have seen a very successful site literally fall out the SE's after a major redesign.

However the users post is about site structure and not whether to redesign or not.

Neil M Hancock

 

[ScottB]

You do need to carefully consider changes to your site's architecture when redesigning but that's not necessarily related to the directory structure. You can effectively change the URL structure without changing how your pages actually link to each other (which is what can have the positive or negative impact on your rankings). Although that said, OWG's example does explain a common case where directory structure naturally dictates link structure so the two aren't always separate issues.

I've been going through a lot of site redesigns in the past 12 months, ranging from small blogs to large, high traffic sites - all had a positive impact on organic traffic (for some of the smaller blogs this equated to 400% increase in organic referrals by only changing the internal architecture). That said, I was approaching each redesign project with the aim of improving architecture that wasn't ideal - there is a risk of negative impact if your designer approaches the task with different goals in mind.

IMO site architecture is one of the most important aspects of SEO that is commonly not addressed as well as it should be.

 

[nass]

IMO site architecture is one of the most important aspects of SEO that is commonly not addressed as well as it should be.

Yup, agree 100%

 

[OldWelshGuy]

Whatever you chose, make sure you 301 any existing pages or you could be cutting your own throat in many ways.

Thanks for the link Nass.

 

[Birmingham]

best is:
mysite.co.uk/
mysite.co.uk/about
mysite.co.uk/contact

notice no trailing slash on the latter 2 even after the page has loaded - this can be achieve with a .htaccess file on a linux server.

and for some distinct special multi-page sections create special1.mysite.co.uk and subdomain2.mysite.co.uk ...etc

 

[eran]

I have met an SEO manager working for a mobile company that 301 some of their deep linked pages to a new minisite home page, all of them to the same page... what a waste.

Whatever you chose, make sure you 301 any existing pages or you could be cutting your own throat in many ways.

Thanks for the link Nass.