Digging deep...

How much does the structure affect rankings?

[allybongo]

How much does it really affect rankings of certain pages if they are a bit buried? I have a site that goes like this

index / folder / folder / keyword.html

Would it help me at all if I removed one of the folders and moved the keyword.html one level up? I am getting some rankings but not many.

Also if I did move up a level how would I tell the engines that I pay for that the url's I submitted have moved, without having to pay again? Eg. inktomi, altavista?

Thanks :)

[chris_f]

I've got to admit I'm curious to peoples opinions on this as well. This post should give it a boost.

Chris

[agerhart]

The closer you have the pages to the root, the better, from a rankings standpoint and PageRank passing standpoint.

If you have a URL registered with INK there is a form/option to change URLs.

If you have a URL registered with AV/Infospace, you can email them to change the URL.

[allybongo]

thanks guys! I'm going to completely restructure and <scarily> wait and see what happens!

:)

[nvision]

As agerhart mentioned, try to keep all pages as close to the root as possible (certainly try to keep the more important ones directly within the root) - if you need folders then perhaps theme them, but try to keep these to a bare minimum.