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When i built my site last year (using a wysiwyg editor) i knew very little about design and SEO. The structure of the site is all pages run out of the one directory. So all pages look like:
www.mysite.com/name of the page.html
There is no structure like www.mysite.com/category/sub category/name of page.html
Whilst there is LINK structure within the site there is no DIRECTORY structure throughout the site.
Do you think this is hurting my rankings in Google? I am having difficulty getting a good ranking in Google for my most important keyword which has 294,000 results for a two word keyword phrase but this could be because of any number of factors.
Do i need to re do the structure of my site? I know that this will be a major pain.
If i do need to re do the structure, do i need to do 301 redirects on all pages except the home page or can i leave ofphans out there for the SE's. Would that be duplicate content cause i don't want a ban from Google.
Thanks in advance for all your help. Greatly appreciated.
I've read similar in other threads in other forums on WW but i've also read the opposite and that it does make a difference in ranking on Google.
Would like to hear the thoughts of others too.
Thanks.
Good link structure, short URLs seem to please both Google and human visitors.
The biggest three factors in good ranking is content, linkage, and what that linkage says but just the same there are 97 other considerations to consider, directory depth and directory naming are just two more.
All other things being equal - a directory structure with complement keywords might help but things are never equal. even when we say this phrase often.
Don't believe that it's a magical solution to #1 - it not.
It often seems that you lose 1 PR for every directory you move down from the root. On that basis you're better off keeping all the files in one directory.
Not because of the directory depth or structure, but because of the links between pages with incoming PageRank and those that don't.
Good link structure, short URLs seem to please both Google and human visitors
The link as navigation goes and usability - 100% correct.
My site is new and I started submitting my site in last December. The PR history so far:
Dec - I don't know (I haven't checked PR at all :) )
Jan - PR0 (new site, first month in index, no backlinks, submitted to dmoz, paid listing in Yahoo)
Feb - PR5 (1st real PR, listed in dmoz)
Mar - PR6 (after current update, backlinks 230)
To my biggest suprise I´m now number 3 in Google, my keyword phrase has 2,840,000. Last month I was only about number 150.
On my site I haven't used any tricks at all. All the structure and content pages are created to be useful for site visitors and customers. I have one link exchange page (about 60 links) in categories interesting for my customers.
I'm using my keyword phrase in my sites title and in every link to my site. That's very important I think. When I named my site (title, not a domain) I had no idea, that it can be useful for search engines. Common sense said me, that it's so natural to have your sites name after what you are actually serving.
Thats great work.
It certainly makes me feel better about my structure and one less thing to wory about. :)
More content and More links with keyword as anchor text seems to be two major factors to work on.
Cheers
I think some webmasters like to "push the boat" out a little further, and their idea of "acceptable" can be different from others. Sometimes the industry you are competing in may force you to do these sort of things too, just to try to get any upper hand available.
content, linkage, and what that linkage says
I'd go with that, so when I see "keyword-widget-keywords-widgets.com/widgetised/widgetized.htm" I get the feeling you have motives ;)
My rule of thumb is to maybe have 1 keyword in the folder and a phrase as the filename...other than that my boat does not get pushed out far ;)
