What is a directory in terms of SEO-friendly Website Structure?
Question: -
Q: I am confused... What do you mean "directory1?" Do you mean in terms of their level? Because the directories are alphabetical so you can't "order" them, per se.
Q: What has more "value": www.domain.com/keyword.com or www.domain.com/keyword/index.html or www.domain.com/keyword/keyword.com? Meaning what is "more" important using keywords in structure or level of directory?
Answer: -
Google interprets every directory level downward as 'less important.' Always embed your keywords into directory names and file names. So, when looking at a website, it see the 'home' directory and the 'index.html' page in that directory (a.k.a., the 'home page') as the most important page on your website.
Then, as you build out your website you will probably create some other directories, such as:
/products
/images
/misc
/news
/blog
These show up as Web url's as in http://www.company.com/products/ or http://www.company.com/news/ and then files inside these directories show up as http://www.company.com/products/leather-shoes.html or http://www.company.com/news/new-shoestore-in-dallas.html
Google 'reads' the English names of those files to interpret what they are about, and it interprets the directory level as the importance level. So in this example /products is one level down. If you added another directory such as /products/shoes/leather/mens.html then that would be three levels down from the home page - /products (that's one), /shoes (that's two), and /leather (that's three.
http://www.company.com/leathershoes.html = very important
http://www.company.com/leather/shoes.html = slightly less important
http://www.company.com/products/shoes/leather/mens.html = a lot less important
The bottom line implication here is to build flat or shallow websites, since Google interprets the higher levels as more important. Finally and even more importantly, anything that is one click accessible from the home page is viewed as very important. So make sure that your highest priority keywords have a one-click access from the home page!
Hope this helps!
- Jason McDonald - info@jm-seo.org
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