Is a deep directory structure a bad thing for SEO?

Question

a friend of mine told me that the company he works at are redoing their SEO for their large website. Large == both number of pages and traffic they get a day.

Currently they have a (quote) deeply nested site , which i'm assuming means /x/y/z/a/b/c.. or something. I also know it's very unRESTful from some of the pages i've also seen -> eg. foo.blah?a=1&b=2&c=3......z=24 (yep, lots of crap in the url).

So updating their SEO sounds like a much needed thing.

But, they are going flat. I mean -> totally flat. eg. /foo-bar-pew-pew-abc-article1

This scares the bollox out of me.

From what he said (if i understood him right), each - character doesn't mean a new heirachial level.

so /foo-bar-pew-pew-abc-article1 does not mean /foo/bar/pew/pew/abc/article1 A space could be replace by a -. A + represents a space, but only if the two words are suppose to be one word (whatever that means). ie. Jean-Luke will be jean+luke but if i had a subject like 'hello world, that would be listed ashello-world`.

Excuse me while i blow my head up.

Is this just mean or is it totally silly to go completly flat. To mean, I was under the impression that when SEO people say keep it as flat as possible, they are trying to say keep it to 1 or 2 levels. 4 is the utter max=.

Is this me or is a flat heirachy a 'really really good thing' for seo ... for MEDIUM and LARGE sites (lots of resources, not necessairly lots of hits/page views).

Answer 1

Well, let's take a step back and look at what SEO is supposed to accomplish; it's meant to help a search engine identify quality, relevant content for users based on key phrases and terms.

Take, for example, the following blog URLs: * http://blog.example.com/articles/2010/01/20/how-to-improve-seo/ * http://blog.example.com/how-to-improve-seo/

Yes, one is deep and the other is flat; but the URL structure is important for two reasons:

1. URL terms and phrases are high-value targets for determining relevance of a page by a search engine
2. A confusing URL may immediately force a user to skip your link in the search results

Let's face it: Google and other search engines can associate even the worst URLs with relevant content.

Take, for example, a search for "sears kenmore white refrigerator" in Google: http://www.google.com/search?q=sears+kenmore+white+refrigerator&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&aq=t&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&client=firefox-a.

Notice the top hit? The URL is http://www.sears.com/shc/s/p_10153_12605_04665802000P , and yet Google replaces the lousy URL with www.sears.com › Refrigerators › Top Freezers. (Granted, 2 results down is the true URL.)

If your goal for SEO is optimized organic relevance, then I would wholeheartedly recommend generating either key/value pairs in the URL, like www.sears.com/category/refrigerators/company/kenmore (meh), or phrase-like URLs like www.sears.com/kenmore/refrigerators/modelNumber. You want to align your URLs with the user's search terms and phrases to maximize your effort.

In the end, if you offer valuable content and you structure your content and site properly, the search engines will accurately gather it. You just need to help them realize how specific and authoritative your content is. :)