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Website Structure & SEO

It is generally recommended to keep a flat structure when planning your website presence. That does not mean however you need to throw everything in the root directory for best results. You should not either however go more than 2-3 levels deep in your directory structure.

Below is an example of a flat structure:

The actual web address (URL) for page three on theme three would look like:

http://www.yourdomain.com/theme3/page3.htm

This website you are on now is so structured with a directory structure of not more than three levels deep. Note that the directories should be named after the main theme of the content to be placed into the directory. In other words, use your main keywords here. Try not to lump everything in the same directories. It is normally wiser to have separate but related themes in different directories.
e.g. a real estate website may have--
www.xyz-real-estate.com/rent/page.html
and
www.xyz-real-estate.com/purchase/page.html

This does not necessarily give you a ranking boost because you have a keyword in your url, the benefit actually has more to do with off-page criteria than on-page as if you are linked to with just a url, you will have your keywords in the link text (anchor text) automatically, which is becoming increasingly important.

Here we have an example of what not to do. A vertical or deep structure:

The web adress (url) to get to page three, theme three now looks like this...:

www.xyz.com/Theme1/Theme2/Theme3/page3.html

The difference here being we have nested the directories. Some sites I have seen go as deep as 4 or 5 levels and the url is so long it completely feels the address bar. The main disadvantage of deep or vertical directory strucures is the fact that search engines spiders may well have difficulty finding and indexing the pages within the deeper directories. Some search engine spiders will only go 2-3 levels deep with their spidering. This is especially so when the deep pages are not well linked, such as from the home page, top level directories or site map.

Make the spidering of your website as easy as possible for search engine spiders. Use keywords for your directory names and website pages. Research and testing has shown that keywords in a url can and do have a ranking benefit albeit often indirectly. Nowadays this has more to do with incoming link text, but it does have an effect never the less.

An ideal url for an english real estate agency in Portsmouth that has a bungalow to rent might be:

www.portsmouth-real-estate.co.uk/bungalows/rent.htm

In the url are 4 keywords. 'portsmouth' , 'real estate', 'bungalows', 'rent'

Some may well link to this page like...

http://www.portsmouth-real-estate.co.uk/bungalows/rent.htm

The result.., keyword rich link text which a search engine will lap up!

Related to site structure is the navigation, internal and external linking of a website. This is covered next...