Are (ultra) flat site structures better for SEO?
-
Noticed that a high-profile site uses a very flat structure for there content. It essentially places most landing pages right under the root domain folder.
So a more conventional site might use this structure:
- www.widgets.com/landing-page-1/
- www.widgets.com/landing-page-1/landing-page-2/
- www.widgets.com/landing-page-1/landing-page-2/landing-page-3/
This site in question - a successful one - would deploy the same content like this:
So when you're clicking deeper into the nav. options the clicks always roll up to the "top level."
Top level pages are given more weight by SEs but conventional directory structures are also beneficial seen as ideal. Why would a site take the plunge and organize content in this way? What was the clincher?
-
What if your site is a large ecommerce site? I'm working with someone who just had their site rebuilt and none of their pages fall into a hierarchy category>category options> product. You go to the category page and then when you go to another, your url extension is completely unique. Is this going to hurt them in the long run?
Keep I'm already having them change some of the URLs because they are useless extensions that don't match the pages and are no good for SEO that way.
Should they seriously consider restructuring too?
Thanks!
-
I agree with these guys that the link structure is what matters. Some of my sites have pages 3 levels deep, but direct links from the top of the home page so they get plenty of link juice from that.
A good reason for a flat architecture is simply to have a short, sweet URL that's easy to remember and share.
It might also just be a byproduct of the CMS that they're using, where product or article pages are given top-level URLs, and category pages are just interstitial pages of links. One advantage of this is being able to re-categorize -- create new category pages and retire ones that aren't paying off -- without having to move/redirect the actual product pages. I do this a lot, for both article and product sites.
-
I haven't seen URL structures as a deal breaker when it comes to ranking, other than when it's full of session IDs, variable strings, and is a massively large URL. Mostly I consider using folder names for tracking purposes and try to keep them short for the most part. That way I can plug in a few to analytics and have a pretty good idea of that area of the site's performance. SEOmoz wrote a great article on this type of analysis at: http://www.seomoz.org/blog/a-powerful-analytics-tip-every-website-should-employ
You could accomplish the same thing with URL naming convention, but a folder would give you a quick way to organize and allow you to use shorter URL names. Back to the SEOmoz example, their folder names are extremely short, and sacrifice keyword targeting for the sake of length. As EGOL says, links are going to matter more than the word(s) in your folder name.
-
Top level pages are given more weight by SEs but conventional directory structures are also beneficial seen as ideal.
I am not so sure about this. I think that the weight is determined more by the linkage structure rather than the folder structure....
.... but would like to hear from anyone who has done actual testing on this.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Google Sites website https://www.opcfitness.com/ title NOT GOOD FOR SEO
We set up a website https://www.opcfitness.com/home on google sites. but google sites page title not good for SEO. How to fix it?
Technical SEO | | ahislop5740 -
Launch of improved site
Hi, Just want to ask you guys if i have missed something in my planning. We have done a migration from Ithemes Exchange to woocommerce. The complete migration are done on our dev server. It has an exakt setup as our live one. My plan is to change our live version with a backup from our migrated and finished site from our dev site. All of our product links will be intact with accept from some that we have combined in to new ones, the ones that are changed has been redirected with a 301. Will this way of launching our site effect our ranking/seo in some way? Thankful for any thoughts about this one! // Jonas
Technical SEO | | knubbz0 -
Site Category structure detrimental to SEO?
Hi Guys, I am hoping that you may be able to help with an internal debate on whether our currently category structuring could be damaging from an SEO point of view. Our site sells t shirts primarily and as such we have a large product base of around 7000+ products. Our category structure currently works like so: Mens/T-Shirts/Movie&TV/TV/ Which I think is fairly typical, though this where it gets interesting, within this end category of "/TV/" there are around 120 categories that are used from a filtration point of view to contain items for each specific show etc, IE Mens/T-Shirts/Movie&TV/TV/Breaking_Bad, Mens/T-Shirts/Movie&TV/TV/Game_of_Thrones. The vast majority of these categories have between 1 and 3 products within them and the rest higher. Multiply this by the large amount of categories that we have on site and these end level "Band Title" categories amount to around 13,000+ categories in the directory. If at this point we put the filtration element aside, what is the communities opinion of the benefits or drawbacks of having the category structure like this? Thanks in advance for any feedback.
Technical SEO | | timsilver0 -
Are sliders killing our site?
Our website, http://shatterbuggy.com, has what I believe is a systemic issue that stems from the heavy reliance upon the Revolution Slider for Wordpress. I am not an SEO expert and our site has vexed many SEOs in the past. We get feedback regularly from customers (especially those that are not tech savvy) that express gratitude for the ease of use via following an image to image sequence to get to their respective booking. This was our goal when creating the site. Incidentally, in many cases, the only linking from page to page is within the slider itself (clickable image) and there is little to no content. That said, we seems to stumble in SERPS against seemingly inferior competition. For example, we should be ranked in spot 1, 2, or 3 ish for "iPhone repair Minneapolis" but rather we are stuck near spot 15. Any thoughts on whether this is a strategy that may be harming us? If so, would simply creating content on these empty (slider only) pages help? Should we create "static links" that connect to the same places as the slider? Also, is our particular use of the slider creating H1 issues? Thank you all! B.
Technical SEO | | BenjaminH0 -
Is dash problem for seo?
My web site http://www.green-lotus-trekking.com is this problem for google search engine optimization? Some little percentage problem or totally I am in Confusion?
Technical SEO | | agsln0 -
Redirection Impact on SEO
Need help urgently. There is the situation [This is how is it working now]: 1. Have a global landing page [say when user types in www.mysite.com - takes user to the global landing page: [www.mysite.com/global/en.html]](http://www.mysite.com/global/en.html] ) 2. Users from this landing page can select a country on his/her choice and get redirected say: [www.mysite.com/us/en.html] Would like to change the functionality as below: 1. When user types in www.mysite.com 1a. Would find the location of the request based on GEO IP and if the request is coming from North America region then would redirect the users to: www.mysite.com/us/en.html 1b. If the request is from any other location/region then it would continue to work as it is currently working: take the user to the global landing page: www.mysite.com/global/en.html Would this change have any negative impact or not found by search engines from SEO perspective? If it does then what are the impacts and if does not then why not. If it does then what is the best possible way to address this request. Appriciate your help. Thanks, Koushik Roy
Technical SEO | | KoushikRoy0 -
What can we do to improve our site
Hi. I am hoping that some of you can help me with the in2town site www.in2town.co.uk The site is a news/lifestyle magazine site. The site is a cross between, huffington post, digital spy, female first and the sun newspaper. Basically the site is a news site as well as covering showbiz news, travel news, health news and advice etc What i would like is for people to look at the site and let me know what they feel i should do to improve the site to make it better for our readers and to gain more readership. I would also like to hear from people on how they find moving around the site as well as the speed of the site. At the moment the site is with an american hosting company and i am in the process of talking to UK hosting companies to move the site. The site is currently on a dedicated server. It would mean a lot if people could give me their advice on how to improve the site and make it a beter experience for our readers while at the same time being able to generate income with the site. Just a quick note, all content is original and we have a number of people who write for the site. many thanks
Technical SEO | | ClaireH-1848860 -
SEO Tomfoolery
Oh Hai, I recently changed the permalink structure on my Wordpress based site, southwestbreaks.co.uk from the standard ?p=123 to a more SEO chummy /%postname%/. As a result, my site has completely dropped off the board for all my previously well ranked search phrases. Having since gotten into SEOmoz a bit more, I can see there are WP plugins available that apparently would've done this a lot more smoothly. I'd be most grateful if someone could explain if this drop off is just temporary, or have I somehow entered Google's shun book? The site has been like this for about 48 hours. Thanks, Tim
Technical SEO | | Southwesttim0