Change Site Structure for Better Indexing?

[brnm98105]

I have a site with several different types of products relating to 1 industry. It currently looks like this

www.example.com/images/products/product-type1/product-type1.html
www.example.com/images/products/product-type1/product-type2.html
www.example.com/images/products/product-type1/product-type3.html
www.example.com/images/products/product-type1/product-type4.html

Im thinking of changing this for better indexing (should i say not as deep indexing - Ill also make sure I add hcacces) to look like this:

www.example.com/product-type1/product-type1.html
www.example.com/product-type1/product-type2.html
www.example.com/product-type1/product-type3.html
www.example.com/product-type1/product-type4.html

or

www.example.com/product-type1.html
www.example.com/product-type2.html
www.example.com/product-type3.html
www.example.com/product-type4.html

Does this make a difference for spiders crawling my site?

[Marcia]

It mostly depends on your linking structure and navigation, but with this:

www.example.com/images/products/product-type1/product-type1.html

Are the three instances of product(s) the same word, and are type1 and type1 the same word?

[pageoneresults]

I might even go as far as this...

example.com/producttype1
example.com/producttype2
example.com/producttype3
example.com/producttype4

In fact, that is how I would proceed from this point forward.

[tedster]

If your concern is only spidering and indexing, then I don't think the url itself matters. As Marcia mentioned, those spidering and indexing are more a function of your site's internal linking structure - as well as your PageRank and what kind of "crawl budget" Google assigns to your domain.

If your concern is better ranking, then repeating keywords several times in the url is not likely to help and it might even trip a penalty in some cases. Having the keyword in the filepath can be a help, but it's not wise to over-stuff the url.

And if your concern is clickthrough and traffic, I'd say pageoneresults is right on the money. Short and clean is much better for actually attracting a click - and since more clicks can also help sustain or even improve ranking.

[londrum]

grouping stuff in a directory is good if its a related word

www.example.com/bank/barclays.html
www.example.com/bank/natwest.html

is better than

www.example.com/barclays.html
www.example.com/natwest.html

[pageoneresults]

Grouping stuff in a directory is good if its a related word.

Most definitely! I'm trimming the www and extensions too. ;)

example.com/bank/barclays
example.com/bank/natwest

And, I'm going to have the facilities in place to allow me to advertise my URIs in such a manner...

Example.com/Bank/Barclays
Example.com/Bank/NatWest

Visual branding.

I might even go one step further and set up a routine that allows me to use my own URI shortening strategy. Perfect for that 140 SMS limitation. :)

[DavidKeffen]

Got to agree with pageoneresults and tedster on this one: Leaner and meaner = Higher clickthrough and traffic.

Wouldn't be especially worried about your initial length URL from a crawl point of view if you have a lot of re-structuring to do in order to change them, but I'd certainly simplify any new products with a simple path.

[nomis5]

My advice would be to go for this structure:

1. www.example.com/products.htm where this page is an index page to the ones below.

2. Then the products in their own directory:
www.example.com/products/barclays-products.htm
www.example.com/products/natwest-products.htm
www.example.com/products/nationwide-products.htm
etc.

I have found this to be excellent for ranking in Google and they seem to understand the structure. The index can literally be a list of the links but a short overall introducution is probably best.

You may find initially that the index page is indexed for say "barclays" better than the barclays page itself which is a bit irritating. But Google eventaully works its way to indexing the individual pages correctly and you get the bonus index page which is indexed for the overall subject.

The only caveat I have for this is the index page should contain more than five links and they must be to files in the same directory. It's worked a treat for me and I've seen it work over three of my larger sites.

Good luck.