Is a deep directory structure bad for SEO?

Question

my friend told me that the company he works with is redoing his SEO for his large website. Large == both the number of pages and the traffic received per day.

They currently have a (quotation) of a deeply embedded site, which I assume means /x/y/z/a/b/c.. or something like that. I also know that this is very WRONG from some of the pages that I saw → for example. foo.blah?a=1&b=2&c=3......z=24 (yes, a lot of crap in the url).

Therefore, updating their SEO sounds like a very necessary thing.

But they go flat. I mean → completely flat. eg. /foo-bar-pew-pew-abc-article1

It scares me with a bollos.

From what he said (if I understood it correctly), each symbol does not mean a new level of chirachia.

therefore /foo-bar-pew-pew-abc-article1 does not mean /foo/bar/pew/pew/abc/article1 A space can be replaced with - . A + represents a space, but only if two words are one word (whatever that means). i.e. Jean-Luke will be jean+luke , but if I had an object like "hello world , that would be listed as hello-world`.

Sorry, while I blow my head.

It just means, or is it completely stupid, to completely close. To keep in mind, I got the impression that when SEO users say that they are as flat as possible, they try to say that they support level 1 or 2. 4 - maximum max =.

Is it me or the flat heirachy "really very good" for seo ... for MEDIUM and LARGE sites (many resources that do not require a lot of page views / views).

Answer 1

Ok, let's take a step back and see what SEO should do: help the search engine determine the quality, relevant content for users based on key phrases and terms.

Take for example the following blog URLs: * http://blog.example.com/articles/2010/01/20/how-to-improve-seo/ * http://blog.exmaple.com/how- to-improve-seo /

Yes, one is deep and the other is flat. The structure of URLs is important for two reasons: 1. Terms and phrases URLs are objects with high cost for determining the relevance of a page using a search engine 2. A knocking down URL can immediately cause a user to skip your link in the search results.

Let's face it. Google and others may associate the worst URLs with relevant content.

Search "sears kenmore white refrigerator" on Google: http://www.google.com/search?q=sears+kenmore+white+refrigerator&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&aq=t&rls=org.mozilla:en-US: official & client = firefox-a

Pay attention to the top hit? URL: http://www.sears.com/shc/s/p_10153_12605_04665802000P , but Google is replacing the lousy URL with "www.sears.com> Refrigerators> Top Freezers". (Of course, 2 results down is the true URL).

If your SEO goal is optimized, organic relevance, then with all my heart I would recommend creating key / value pairs in the URL "www.sears.com/category/refrigerators/company/kenmore" (meh) or phrase-like URLs such as "www.sears.com/kenmore/refrigerators/modelNumber." You want to align your URLs with user search terms and phrases to maximize your efforts.

In the end, if you offer valuable content and properly structure your content and website, search engines will definitely collect it. You just need to help them understand how specific and authoritative your content is :)

Answer 2

Generally, the less navigation to reach the content, the better. But with a logical packaging strategy and well-thought-out deep-linking, you can control excess directory depth rather than hurt seo and search visibility. Remember that Google is trying to return the most relevant link and best user experience, so if your site has 3 URLs for the same search query and it takes 2 or 3 exits to search for relevant content, Google will consider this to be bad and start omitting all your urls in the search results.

You need to think about how visitors will find your content, rather than navigating through it. Think of content discovery and just navigation.

NTN

Answer 3

Flat or deeply nested should not really affect SEO. The key part is how these individual pages relate to how they get ranked. I wrote some basic things this year ago, see here , but essentially, if the pages are not buried deep inside the site, i.e. It takes a few clicks (or links from the point of view of Google), then they should be evaluated approximately the same in any case. Google used a lot more keyword weight in the URL, but this was reduced with later changes to the algorithm. It helps to use keywords, but that's not all.

What you will need to consider are the following two important points:

1) How will the structure of the URL be perceived by users of the site? Will they be able to easily navigate the site and not rely on the structure of URLs in the address bar?

2) When making navigation changes like this, it is vital to set up redirects from the old url. Google hates 404, and they must either enter 410 (Gone) HTTP responses for pages are no longer valid, or 301 HTTP responses for persistent redirects (with a new URL).

If you make any big changes, such as you, you can save a lot of time for the site to be indexed successfully using XML Sitemaps and the Google webmaster console.