Themes

- deep directories or no?

[Canton]

I've been reading up on themes of late, taking a look at Brett's pyramid, etc. One thing I'm unclear on though - is it advisable to actually build sub-directories (and then sub-directories inside those sub-directories) to represent the "levels" of the pyramid, or is the pyramind concept being applied to the linking structure only?

I've read in several places that some engines like pages that reside in the root directory, assuming that the most important information in a site resides at the top...any thoughts on this?

~Canton

[Woz]

>is it advisable to actually build sub-directories...

I would say yes. Have a look at the major directories, ODP, YAHOO, and so on, and you have your answer. Also, this allows you to seed the subdorectories with appropriate keywords to help the SEs to refine the content of each level.

>I've read in several places that some engines like pages that reside in the root directory, assuming that the most important information in a site resides at the top...any thoughts on this?

I would disagrtee with that 99% of the time. Apart from the odd example that I am sure does exist somewhere, my thoughts are that the deeper you click, the more detailed and focused the information you receive. If I was a search engine I would be mapping a site completely to find the deepest pages, indexing those deep pages first, and then working my way backup to the top as time permits.

Onya
Woz

[Robert Charlton]

>>If I was a search engine I would be mapping a site completely to find the deepest pages, indexing those deep pages first, and then working my way backup to the top as time permits.<<

Woz - I agree, but I'm seeing that a bunch of engines are really only indexing either the home page or pages with external links to them. I think this is both because the engines are going pay for inclusion, and also possibly because of limited resources... though maybe I'm being too kind to them.

[ebgreen]

I have some suggestions for themes and better rankings. Note: These are my opinions, but they have worked for me.

1) Place this meta-tag on your site
<meta name="classification" content="health, fitness, nutrition, supplements">. Obviously changing content to whatever your site provides. Search engines are now starting to classify websites.
2) Build sub-directorys. From my experience this helps with the site theme and some search engines count this towards link popularity from another site. Some search engines cannot tell the difference in the main site and sub directory.
3) Always keep your main doorway and hallway pages on the top level, but build a three folder deep directory for less important pages e.g. directory/information/archives (just as an example. Make sure you link to the home page with a text link and build a top level hallway page for all of these pages and submit the hallway page to the search engines. This has given great weight and increased rankings to my site. Not necessarily from the three levels deep pages, but it gives the site a directory feel and some search engines like this a lot!

Note again: These are my opinions and the have worked well for me.