File Structure for best SEO

web content site

[ehowadmin]

Hi, I recently bought a web content site. Right now it has a dynamic file serving structure and we're changing it to a static one to encourage search engines to index it better. The site has about 15,000 pages of content.

The simplest file structure would be to have the following:

1. www.site.com/cameras/1942.html

it would also be possible to eliminate the subcategory

2. www.site.com/cameras-1942.html

more difficult be possible would be:

3. www.site.com/cameras-1942-canon-elph-accessories.html

Questions:
1. How significant, if it all, is the value of moving everything to the root directory (i.e. 1 to 2 above) for better SEO?
2. How significant, if at all, is the benefit of having relevant keywords in the URL as in #3 above?
3. If we do as in #3, with hyphens separating the keywords, has anyone heard of google or others penalize for hyphens in the domain name as it might seem Spammy? (we don't want to spam, just be as relevant as possible)

Thanks in advance for your help.

[Llama]

You know that Google does consider keywords when ranking a site. Look at the keyword Google, in Google. It shows the url as www.google.com/ and therefore shows that they do see the keywords in the URL. I don't, however, know of how much impact this would have with your website's ranking.

[pageoneresults]

Think about the user first. Out of all the scenarios you have posted above, what would be easiest to read aloud to someone and they would understand how to browse to the file name?

www.example.com/accessories/canon/
www.example.com/accessories/sony/

The other thing to keep in mind is that you want to keep the URI strings as short and sweet as possible. No fluff, hide variables that are of no value. Structure the URIs as if you were setting up a site with sub-directories representing each category and then each sub-category, etc.

Questions

1. How significant, if it all, is the value of moving everything to the root directory (i.e. 1 to 2 above) for better SEO?

It doesn't matter. If your linking structure is set up properly, you can go 2, 3 or 4 levels deep. You just need to be sure that you provide direct links to those deep pages.

2. How significant, if at all, is the benefit of having relevant keywords in the URL as in #3 above?

Not a good idea based on your example. I believe the more hyphens you have, the more risk is involved. If you can do without hyphens, I would. You can also structure the URI using / instead of hypens.

3. If we do as in #3, with hyphens separating the keywords, has anyone heard of google or others penalize for hyphens in the domain name as it might seem Spammy? (we don't want to spam, just be as relevant as possible)

There have been rumblings around here about multiple hyphenated URIs getting hit with penalties, it all depends on who you talk to.

Just remember this, provide the shortest possible path for the spider and the easiest to remember URI for the user. It will make life much easier for everyone. ;)