A logical and hackable URL structure versus PR distribution

A dilemma

[rubenski]

Dear Webmasterworlders,

I am currently 'mod_rewriting' the dynamic URLs of my website to static ones.

The main and most important pages of my site are product pages. They are requested with 3 parameters, like this

mydomain.ext/index.php?department=1&category=2&product=3

This would logically translate to something like

mydomain.ext/1/2/3.html

In this way the URLs are perfectly hackable and they very clearly indicate where the user is located within the site structure. A clear advantage in my opinion.

However, I noticed page rank distibution follows directory structure. If my homepage has PR4 than my product pages will get 4-1-1-1 = PR1, because they are three levels deep. This could be seen as a disadvantage. (Depending on your opinion on the importance of PR)

If I want my product pages to get a high PR I'd best place them directly under the root, like this:

mydomain.ext/1.2.3.html

It's a big dilemma. Do you think I should go for usability and create hackable URLs, or should I go for a higher PR and place the product pages directly under the root?

[tedster]

Real Page Rank does not depend on how many levels deep the page is (although the toolbar number may at times look as though it does). Page Rank depends on links to the page and the PR of the linking page. You can have a page 6 "levels" deep that has higher PR than the Home Page!

So you can choose your rewrite scheme with no regard to PR, because it will have no effect on Page Rank.

[rubenski]

Ok, I was not aware of that. Thanks. I'll create hackable URLs than.

[Oliver Henniges]

Instead of using e.g. mydomain.ext/1/2/3.html think about replacing 1,2 and 3 by natural names of your categories/departments/whatever. At present AFAIK folder names are not very important for SEO-purposes but who knows about future shifts in the algos. Besides your structure becomes unhackable.

I'd also recon to think for a few minutes about the perhaps fractal nature of your product groups, just in case your business will grow naturally like the roots of a tree. In that case a future structure might for some parts go down to mydomain.ext/1/2/3/4/5/6.html while for others it remains at the third level. I know that this seems somewhat obscure and that standard-shop-software generally doesn't account for this; I also admit that I haven't found a solution for this myself yet, but maybe it is relevant for you.

[Patrick Taylor]

For what it's worth, I would recommend:

mydomain.ext/1/2/product (or whatever other folder names you use instead of /1/ /2/ etc)

... without the .html file extension (or any other file extension). It is becoming meaningless to users and ties your URLs to a technology that you may not wish to use in the future. Also, dropping the extensions makes it much easier to give out URLs verbally.

[Oliver Henniges]

In interesting idea. I recently switched to a php-basis and now let my older html-pages be parsed by adding
AddType x-mapp-php4 .html
to my .htaccess-file. Are there any issues (performance?) why this should be done differently?

[Oliver Henniges]

Again #200. Anything wrong with my posts-counter?

[g1smd]

I believe that posts in this "noisy" sub-forum, don't count towards your total.