URL best practices, use folders or not ?

[77Agency]

Hi

I have a question about URLs. Client have all URL written after domain and have only one / slash in all URLs. Is this best practice or i need to use categories,folders?

Thanks

[lavellester]

not quite sure what you mean exactly - can you expand with and example?

Thanks

[77Agency]

URL is without any category or folder

www.example.com/credits

www.example.com/accounts-titanium

www.example.com/accounts-demo

www.example.com/open-demo-account

is this right or i need to use:

www.example.com**/**accounts/titanium

www.example.com/accounts/open-demo-account

[lavellester]

Information architecture is important from a usability and search engine prospective.

I'd say go for the categories divided by the /

www.example.com**/**accounts/titanium
www.example.com/accounts/open-demo-account

This makes more sense and lends itself to scalability etc.

hope this helps.

there are some really good articles on information architecture on the seomoz and the web

[wojkwasi]

I'd use folders or categories if the amount of products/items is large and/or going to expand

If it's a small amount & finite then make the URLs as short as possible

[77Agency]

the site is small about 60 pages and max depth level is 3

[77Agency]

http://www.seomoz.org/blog/should-i-change-my-urls-for-seo

In this article point 2 is saying that the unstructured is better so i`m confused.

[wojkwasi]

Will the site categories/products grow? If so, then the slash could be used to organise the structure & prepare for the future

In the example, you presented:

1. www.example.com/accounts-titanium
2. www.example.com**/**accounts/titanium

These are the same length & make no real difference

When we compare these 2, however:

1. www.example.com/open-demo-account
2. www.example.com/accounts/open-demo-account

You can see that #1 is shorter, doesn't repeat keyword (even though they are plural) & would be more likely clicked in the SERPs

Does that help some more?

[wojkwasi]

Think about it from the user's point of view. What would work best for them? Maybe even get some feedback from some site users if possible

[Dr-Pete]

It's a trade-off, for both SEO and users, and I don't think there's one answer that fits every situation. The category level can add information, but it also makes URLs longer, which can be bad for both bots and people. If you have short, descriptive categories that aren't repeated in the product/page names, and those categories mimic your site structure, then I think it can be positive.

My argument was mostly against people adding categories just for SEO benefit (it's probably minimal, at best) or repeating every category, sub-category, etc. to the point of absurdity, causing keyword cannibalization and massive URLs. For example:

www.bobscamerashop.com/cameras/digital-cameras/canon-cameras/eos-cameras/camera-canon-eos-rebel-t3

Of course, that's also keyword stuffed, but I'm exaggerating to prove a point. You can go too far in either direction.

In general, though, I don't think categories in the URL are necessarily bad. In some cases, as Woj said, they could be a positive for users and possible even SEO.