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I am designing a new website which will have about 60 pages to start with, and eventually hundreads of pages. I am trying to decide which structure I should use for organizing the site. Obviously I want the pages to be highly optimized.
As an example, the site is about widgets. There will be different sections to the site, with articles, tutorials, reviews. So it would be natural to have a sub folder for each of these, as follows:
widgets.com/widget-articles/
widgets.com/widget-tutorials/
widgets.com/widget-reviews/
However I have been reading up on SEO and have read that the further away from the root, the less SEO friendly pages will be. I have looked at a competitor's website and they have hundreads of pages, but none are in sub folders. It must be hard to organize and update for the webmaster, but they have obviously done this for a reason.
So I would like people's opinions on whether using sub folders is a good idea or not. It seems the logical thing to do, and easier for me as a webmaster, and looks better for the human visitor. But of course I have to balance this with what's best for the big G and co.
Your thoughts welcome.
Tim
the further away from the root, the less SEO friendly pages will be
Be careful how you interpret this statement. To paraphrase: the further away in terms of links from the root a page is, the less prominence a page will have within a site and the less likely it is to perform well in search results.
You're at a tricky but nonetheless critical stage in planning the site: deciding what information you have, and how you will categorise it.
IMO URLs have two potential benefits for users:
- It helps them know what they are likely to see at a URL prior to clicking through
- It reveals some elements of categorisation
I believe these are significant factors in why search engines pay attention to URLs.
I generally start by thinking about the site audience: what are the key factors affecting why they might visit the content? That should be a significant influence on the eventual choice of categories.
Let's say I sell widgets. From market research I might know that the key factor affecting those looking for widgets is colour. I need to match that up against the content I have: what are the common themes and how much content I have related to a particular theme.
I might end up with a major category of widgets, sub-categorised by colours, and doubtless I want this to be reflected in my URLs:
widgets.tld/green/
widgets.tld/green/why
widgets.tld/blue/
widgets.tld/blue/how
Perhaps I have a collection of people reading tutorials about my green widgets:
widgets.tld/green/tutorials/
widgets.tld/green/tutorials/fix
widgets.tld/green/tutorials/break
Note: I consider file extensions to be an unnecessary part of a URL. I also prefer a trailing slash only when there is inner content. You may have your own preference
If you read a URL backwards, it should tell you something useful: I can fix via a tutorial about green widgets (on a site with more than one green widget tutorial) :)
about 60 pages to start with, and eventually hundreds of pages
You're right to be considering the scalability of your URL structure. I often end up trying to salvage some knowledge from the reason a URL structure doesn't work 12 months later. A common problem is that categories are either too narrow, or alternatively end up being less expansive than it seemed in the beginning ;)
Naturally, there are many different approaches to creating a good URL structure - and every site is unique. So, your mileage may vary ;)
Thank for your post, which was really useful.
As I said, I think using sub folders is more logical. I really don't want to have all my pages jumbled up together as I think this would cause problems. I also think it wouldn't look right for the end user.
Another issue I am thinking about is the naming of the sub folders, and which keywords to use. For an SEO viewpoint it would be better to use a certain phrase such as 'learn-widgets', but I just don't think it looks right. The alternative would be 'tutorials'. Whilst it doesn't contain the keywords, I think it looks more natural.
I guess it's all just a balance. The most important thing is that the site is top quality, with great content, and well structured.
