5 Reasons To Use a Folder Name URL Structure
I’ve restructured the SEOptimise website today to implement a folder name URL structure. This redirects the old .asp filenames to the new folder name version instead, there are several advantages I can see to doing this and I’ve listed the five main reasons I believe why websites can benefit from using folder name URL’s.
1) Full Domain Link Juice
- The full weight of the domain is used when using folders as opposed to sub-domains. This is because the search engines will view the folder as part of the main site rather than a sub-site.
2) More Memorable URL’s
- If your promoting the URL either online or offline it’s far easier to remember if it’s short and simple, making the user add a .html to the end makes it less likely to be remembered.
3) Looks Cleaner/More Professional
- In my opinion filename extensions can look a bit messy, I think something like www.seoptimise.com/services looks far more professional than the previous URL which was www.seoptimise.com/our-services.asp
4) Can Switch Hosting Easily
- Another factor with this change was because it’s possible the site will be moving from a Windows server to Linux in the near future. This means that the ASP file extensions would have to be changed to PHP, using the default page within a folder gets around this problem by removing the need of a file extension in the URL entirely.
5) Easy to Organise
- The root level got very messy using the previous structure, grouping this into foldernames makes the webpages far more manageable. I’ve also found some very similar webpages which are now redirected to one version instead which will help the users and search engines to find exactly what we want them to.
Feel free to add your own in the comments if you disagree or think I’ve missed any other reasons to make this change.
August 21st, 2007 at 12:34 pm
*** Another factor with this change was because it’s possible the site will be moving from a Windows server to Linux in the near future. This means that the ASP file extensions would have to be changed to PHP. ***
In fact the extension does not matter. I run PHP sites that show .html URLs. There is a PHP-scripted site that shows .asp URLs. You can use any extension you like. It doesn’t matter what it is. With apache it is a one-line job to set up each extension.
However I do agree that “folder URLs” are even better.
September 15th, 2007 at 8:48 am
How are you handling the potential negative effect this re-structure will have on your search visibility?
With external links to old .asp pages, are you 301-redirecting to the new pages?
Is this the best way of handling a re-structure?
I’m about to re-structure a client’s site in a major way and would love some tips on how to ensure there is no negative effect on search visibility.
March 5th, 2008 at 11:33 pm
If I have many web pages in one category, do I put them all in the same folder or each of them have a folder name? let’s say my site has 200 webpages, do I make 200 folder names, one for each page?
Manny
March 6th, 2008 at 10:05 am
Manny, the easy to do this is using .htaccess to automatically rewrite URL’s. This works especially well for dynamic, database-driven websites which would use URL ID’s by default, for example WordPress does this but the URL structure can be changed easily with a small piece of .htaccess code.
March 27th, 2009 at 12:13 am
Yeah but how do search engines view these structures? Is it more beneficial to use folders rather than have everything in the root?
For example, if mywebcompany.com offers 4 main services, each with sub services, is it better to have:
mywebcompany.com/service1/index.html
mywebcompany.com/service1/subservice1.html …and so on
OR
mywebcompany.com/service1.html
mywebcompany.com/service1a.html
mywebcompany.com/service2.html …and so on
September 1st, 2010 at 6:41 pm
We have seen a marked improvement to SEO by changing the URL structure of folders to be more readable to the search engines and visitors to the site. So agree it is beneficial. LT