URL structure -- SEO no brainer

[website]

Hey everyone, this is probably a no brainer to most of you, but its got me stumped.

What's more important in SEO, filename.htm or the path leading up to the filename.htm?

another way to put it:

.../fashion/japanese/unique/index.htm
or
.../unique-japanese-fashion.htm

[janharders]

I'd go with the directory-style ... not so much because of SEO (I believe they're both equally good but not that big an influence), but because of usability. If you're having fashion from japan, france and new zealand, a directory-structure like that would make sense and can be a hint to users regarding the scope of your page (e.g. "there are probably sites for other countries as well")

[Stefan]

Agreed with janharders on usability, although for SEO my experience is that pages do best if they're not in a folder (that is, best if it's www.example.com/every_single_page.htm). It's impractical for large sites, and even a problem for me with only 500+ pages, 90% of which are in var/www/html (much scrolling to find pages you need to add-to/edit). But I have noticed that when I add pages to var/www/html/subsection/whatever.htm, they usually don't do as well. Part of that may be my navigation (which is circuitous, to say the least), so I don't really know.

If it's a large, complex site, it's probably best to do whatever helps you to maintain it most efficiently.

[website]

ok - so if that case, what is the better of these two scenario's:

.../fashion/japanese/unique/index.htm
or
.../fashion/japanese/unique/unique-japanese-fashion.htm

or is the last one just overkill?

[Marcia]

.../fashion/japanese/

That's plenty. No index.htm and why paint yourself into a corner with unique as a modifier? What if you decide to promote popular instead of unique?

[website]

the only reason i'd want it would be to rank for the keyword "unique japanese fashion".

If that was the case, would it benefit me to include it?

[Robert Charlton]

.../fashion/japanese/

I agree, that should be quite enough. Also, it makes sense, if you think about it, to organize your directories so the most general terms are closer to the root.

the only reason i'd want it would be to rank for the keyword "unique japanese fashion".

If you're thinking about Google, I'd be careful about getting too right on these days. G is getting very sensitive about over-optimization. That said, I don't think the path names have that big an effect on rankings. The highlighted terms do attract the eye in serps, though.

Also, if you're ranking for [japanese fashion], ranking for [unique japanese fashion] should not be so difficult that it makes sense to build a directory for the word.