Forum Moderators: phranque
Some background info.. It's a small site, 5-10 pages, it's been up for 15 + years, sorely outdated. Current structure has all html files in the root directory with very short names (3 characters, i.e. xyz.html).
I'd like some feedback as to whether getting more descriptive (using subfolders and more specific file names) will help. And will abandoning or redirecting the old short urls hurt me? (Not sure if their longevity has any positive impact). There wouldn't be more than 2 levels of subfolders and only 1 or 2 files in the final directories. Assume I'm only selling 5 or 6 tools at a hardware store..
Old example: myhardwarestore.com/abc.html
New example: myhardwarestore.com/hammers/steel_framing_hammer.html
Thank you in advance for any input!
Welcome aboard Bueller, in respect to changing your URL's, on a small site it's easy to create a set of .htaccess rules that do a permanently moved header so the S.E.'s know the old link has changed.
<IfModule mod_rewrite.c>
RewriteEngine on
RewriteRule ^old_file.html$ /new_file.html [R=301,L]
</IfModule>
You will see some temporary dips in results once you make these changes, but it will almost always come back. A few years ago we used the "down season" of one site to make some major changes - some of them involving the URL's - and it dipped for about a week, then came back with a vengeance.
From that, one can deduce that if Matt says it is a good idea, one should probably do it. =)
Though he also said if you have an existing site without keywords in the URL and your ranking fine, you shouldn't go out of your way to change your entire site URL structure.
But if you are starting from scratch, I would recommend it.
[Matt Cutts references cited from in-person attendance when he was speaking at Pubcon and online video]
as mentioned above, you want to consider carefully and have a really good reason for changing and existing url.
"Cool URIs Don't Change [w3.org]"
on the other hand, eyetracking/heatmap studies show that searchers spend time looking at the url so if you can light up relevant keywords in the url it will probably help click-through to some extent.
[edited by: phranque at 9:38 am (utc) on Dec. 2, 2009]
I understand domain longevity can have an impact on SEO, but couldn't find any info pointing to longevity of file names, which was a slight consideration.
Here's the thing, the site hadn't been updated in over 6 years and was still using frames...go ahead - cringe! Forget about PR and SERP, they were non-existent. So I don't have much to lose unless the 2 levels of subs turn out to hurt me. For all the work I've put into other people's sites, I kept putting off my own.
A small site does not need sub directories for organization. What Matt is talking about is that URl's help people to know where they are in your site structure not for ranking. A 5 page site needs url's like www.example.com/keyword.html or just www.example.com/keyword/ You can use one dash but I would not do more.
My point is it has very little value. While you are fretting over url's I can outrank you with www.example.com/123.html with more links. On page SEO is a very tiny part of ranking.
