What is the SEO Impact of Adding a Directory to URL
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I would like to add a new directory named “products” for all of the product detail pages on my site. Instead of having the URL for a product be “mysite.com/product-details-page.aspx” we would like to change it to “mysite.com.com/products/product-detail-page.aspx.”
I want to do this to enable us to add product pages to our traffic funnel analysis by filtering visits to the "product" directory - right now we can't track visits to product pages in the funnel because they are just one-off the main site.
I know this change will require redirects for every single product. Is there anything else that needs to be done?
My main question is, will this change negatively impact the SEO value of the product pages? We have several product pages ranking in the SERPs, and I don't know if pushing them one directory further will change that.
Thanks for your input!
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Will moving the product pages further down the site hierarchy negatively impact your SEO? Maybe a tiny bit (http://www.seomoz.org/article/search-ranking-factors#metrics-8) but I'd probably still do it with one caveat.
Are you actually calling the folder "products"? Why not group them under a more specific name? So for example if you sell mobile phones rather than having "mysite.com/products/iphone4" you would have "mysite.com/apple/iphone4". This is the approach I would take.
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