The site root may not be the site's content root.

Less emphasis on root directory needed?

[theboyduck]

Hi everyone,

Traditional SEO tells us that its good practice to put your pages as near to the site's root directory as possible.

For example,

 1. www.yourdomain.dom/samecontent.html

ranks better than

 2. www.yourdomain.dom/somefolder/samecontent.html

(all other factors affecting rank being equal)

But what about dynamically generated web sites that can't/don't use the site root folder at all or only for redirects? Some of these sites have no pages indexed in directories close to or in the site root - this is what concerns me.

Many dynamically generated sites are built on the MVC (Model-View-Controller) model.

I need an example to help illustrate my concerns so I'll use a web site for which all requests go through a Java servlet acting as a controller (similarly this could apply to an ASP/PHP/JSP MVC modelled site). Lets say that all indexed URLs within the site would then begin with the string:

www.yourdomain.dom/yourcontext/servlet/controller/template/

Example URLs of pages within this site are:

www.yourdomain.dom/yourcontext/servlet/controller/template/index.html
www.yourdomain.dom/yourcontext/servlet/controller/template/widgets/index.html
www.yourdomain.dom/yourcontext/servlet/controller/template/widgets/products.html

I want to term the "

www.yourdomain.dom/yourcontext/servlet/controller/template/

" path as the "content root" of the site, because all the site's content is located on paths that stem from this path.

Now compare the MVC site to a separate site with the same content and the only difference being that it isn't dynamically generated so it can have a structure as shown below.

www.anotherdomain.dom/index.html
www.anotherdomain.dom/widgets/index.html
www.anotherdomain.dom/widgets/products.html

So the "content root" of this site is equal to the site root - unlike the dynamically generated site.

My question is this - which of the 2 sites would rank the higher (all other factors being equal)? The MVC modelled one or the static one?

If the answer is they'd rank the same, then great - that's the answer I wanted to hear.

If the answer is the static site then why should this be? I think the SEs' algos would be sophisticated enough to use a web site's "content root" as oppose to its site root. Simple analysis would uncover a content root for a site.

So does anybody know the answer to this one?

[bird]

You might want to look at the problem from a visitors perspective.

Does the string "/yourcontext/servlet/controller/template/" carry any useful information for your users? If not, you better get rid of it.

Do both "/index.html" and "/yourcontext/servlet/controller/template/index.html" exist and carry different information? If not, same conclusion as above.

It is never a good idea to bother your visitors (both human and robotic) with the internal mechanics of your site. If you're on a unix server, a few simple statements in the .htaccess file will make the mess disappear. There are similar mechanisms for IIS, but don't ask me about the specifics there:

RewriteEngine on
RewriteRule ^yourcontext/servlet/controller/template(.*)$ /$1 [L]

If the result is easier digesteable for some search engines, then so much the better. But that will only be a positive side effect of what you should do anyway.

[theboyduck]

Yes this isn't ideal for the site's visitors, they can't gleam a lot of useful information from these long URLs.

But I'm looking at this purely from the SEs' perspective - can anyone provide any insight to the questions:

which of the 2 sites would rank the higher (all other factors being equal)? The MVC modelled one or the static one?

Thanks in advance for any feedback.