Hyperlink Structure

Rob · #1 (**permalink**) 01-08-2008, 03:05 PM

After reading lots of articles from SBI! i have been focusing mainly on there section on tier structure and the pyramid shape, mine is like that but i have secondary navigation pages with links to my tier 3 pages.

But I was also reading another articles and it related to folders and sections in your FTP I have currently

Home > Content > Tier 3 Pages (specific pages)

Im wondering whether to completely remove my 'content' and sub sections inside that folder completely and just have everything in my main folder so.

www.mydomain.com/mypage.html

Instead of www.mydomain.com/content/subfolder/mypage.html

I heard search engines can penalize useless sub folders it might just be speculation but im just wondering what you guys think?

lisa · #2 (**permalink**) 01-08-2008, 04:08 PM

I do both. With my SBI!, site everything is jumbled in one folder. Not my ideal scenario for file management, but since it's the way SBI! does it, not much I can do.

On 2create I use the /folder/page1.html structure but it's not an extra folder because I name the folder according to the topic. (i.e. design, money, traffic, etc.)

Not really sure how to measure which one does best but I wouldn't worry about it. 2create get way more traffic using the extra folder and that doesn't line up with what the article you read says. But then again, 2create has way more content and I work on that site much more.

I think when it comes down to it, it's all about backlinks. If your site becomes popular in your niche, it's not going to matter much what structure you have. Years ago I may have answered this differently but these days I don't think it matters much.

Just as it's becoming less about meta tags, I think the other traditional SEO techniques will become less important too.

Rob · #3 (**permalink**) 01-08-2008, 04:23 PM

Everything points to Search engines getting increasingly intelligent and more responsive to SEO techniques im starting to believe SEO is dying.

Do you think I should just leave it, and carry on as before it wouldn't take me long to change all the links I have quick copy & paste skills!

lisa · #4 (**permalink**) 01-08-2008, 04:42 PM

Yup, I agree, it is dying. But that's a good thing because it eliminates more worthless sites in the long-run.

Unless it's just bothering you to no end, I'd leave it. I have seen no evidence that it matters either way.

Rob · #5 (**permalink**) 01-09-2008, 01:13 PM

I think im going to remove the 'content' folder as it has no relevance to my topic really and its purely useless so it will be.

http://www.mydomain.com/information/page.html

So much easier and logical, I actually got denied a link exchange for my long folder structure, not that it would of made a big impact.

lisa · #6 (**permalink**) 01-09-2008, 02:28 PM

Yeah good call. No point in an empty folder. At first I thought you meant "content" as in a placeholder for an actual folder that contains files. But if it's just an empty folder that just makes your URL unnecessarily longer for no reason.

I wouldn't have denied a link exchange for that though. Oh well. It's their loss right?

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