Site Design

[deronsizemore]

I was reading another forum and it had a sticky thread about how to have a successful site. One of the topics was site design and it said this:

"Arrange the site in a logical manner with directory names hitting the top keywords you wish to hit.
You can also go the other route and just throw everything in root (this is rather controversial, but it's been producing good long term results across many engines). "


what is meant by arranging with directory names hitting the top keywords....?

[James]

It means that if you're getting lots of SE traffic for a term and you've got a poorly performing term above it in your navigation that you may want to shuffle the order.

[Masetek]

I try to keep it no more than 1 level

/

or /section/

Seems to work for me so far, though I've had the best results with /blah.html straight off the root.

[deronsizemore]

I try to keep it no more than 1 level

/

or /section/

Seems to work for me so far, though I've had the best results with /blah.html straight off the root.

So it's saying like www.sitename.com/cool where "cool" would be the top keyword?

I'm not really understanding what straight off the root is...in your example you just said it was like /blah.html. Wouldn't that be the same as /cool?

[Chris]

By straight off the root they mean not using /'s in the URL

So, for instance, on this site a URL might read like this:

http://www.websitepublisher.net/website_promotion/search_engine_optimization/

Instead they'd have you use this:

http://www.websitepublisher.net/website_promotion-search_engine_optimization.html

[Blue Cat Buxton]

Oh yuk!

(I supose in the above example though you could drop the website promotion part of the URL), but it is then less neat than your existing way

Does it have any significant benefit in SEO terms though ?

[deronsizemore]

By straight off the root they mean not using /'s in the URL

So, for instance, on this site a URL might read like this:

http://www.websitepublisher.net/webs..._optimization/

Instead they'd have you use this:

http://www.websitepublisher.net/webs...imization.html

Ohhhh..got ya now! Thanks for clearing up. ;-)

[Masetek]

http://www.websitepublisher.net/webs...imization.html

I only use off the root for small sites...

ie

site.com/page.html

if the site is big enough to warrant sections I use / method

[ozgression]

Does it have any significant benefit in SEO terms though ?

Personally, I'd doubt it.