Importance of sub directories

[tomhumf]

Hi,

I'm working on a new site which only has about 20 pages at the moment. Currently all the pages are in the root directory, but are assigned to a category in the database. I am using query strings to display the pages.

My menu seperates the pages into categories, so from the users point of with I think navigation will be ok.

My question is, what reasons are there to put pages in sub directories, apart from it being more organised? Does it help with SEO much?

Thanks
Tom

[BeeDeeDubbleU]

For a site like you describe I doubt that there would be anything to be gained from using sub directories other than using the names of the directories for keywords?

[tomhumf]

O.k thanks, how about if the site got to be hundreds or thousands of pages? I plan to add lots more content. One reason I have used subdirectories is that categories may change while in the early stages.

[topr8]

one common way of structure is indeed:

domain/category/subcategory/item

it helps in that it gets your category names into the uri, which helps visitors and google alike.

one problem with this is of course when an item is in more than one category, or subcategory.

my own view is that for growth then using subdirectory folders makes things easier to manage in the future ....

although remmeber, especially if you are on linux, that very often these folders, don't actually exist they are rewritten using .htaccess
so that the page:
domain/widgets/green/furry
actually is actual resolved to:
domain/page.php?cat=widgets&subcat=green&item=furry

[tomhumf]

Thanks for that topr8.

I will probably start using sub directories when the site grows a bit and I can see the structure a bit better. I am not able to use .htaccess on this site which is one reason I haven't used sub directories.

[piatkow]

Once, in my ignorance, I bought a domain name from a company that used frames for forwarding. To be able to publish addresses for deep links I ended up with a sub directory for every topic (between 1 and 3 pages each).

Idon't know what it did for SEO but I found that it made management a lot easier. Now that the domain is set up properly I have stuck with this structure for additional topics.