Does page "depth" matter

[DenverKelly]

Would it have a negative effect on SEO to have a link from the home page to this page...

http://www.website/com/page1deep/page2deep

rather than to this page

http://www.website/com/page1deep

I'm hoping that made some sense. If not I'll try to clarify.

Thanks,

Mark

[CaseyKluver]

Hi Mark,

This will not hurt your SEO at all, here is a video from Matt Cutts explaining the issue: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l_A1iRY6XTM

Hope that helps!

watch?v=l_A1iRY6XTM

[SEM-Freak]

I might have misunderstood the question but what really matters is how you get to the content not necessarily the URL structure (relevancy required - no spam please).

Given this "freshness" aspect i.e. recent links / social shares will enhance the opportunities for this particular page to appear in the results (given other SEO boxes are "ticked"), the "extra" folders will not matter.

[AlanMosley]

Its not how many folders deep your pages is, but how many clicks from the home page it is.

if page domain.com/deep/deep/deep/deeppage.htm is linked from the home page then thats ok.

if page domain.com/rootpage.htm takes 4 clicks to get to it from the home page then you have a problem.

[DenverKelly]

Thank you Geoff, Casey and Alan.

Great answers and exactly what I needed to know.

[Alex-Harford]

"if page domain.com/rootpage.htm takes 4 clicks to get to it from the home page then you have a problem."

I've always believed it's best to keep the clicks down, but I recently read some research that shows many clicks are not necessarily a problem: http://www.uie.com/articles/three_click_rule/ - though the research is from 2003 and I'd say people have become more impatient and expectant of more instant results since then, it's still interesting and proves that 3 clicks doesn't have to be a rule.

There's also a useful article about "the scent of information" here: http://searchengineland.com/seo-and-the-scent-of-information-26206

[AlanMosley]

I had a quick scan thought the article and it looks likethey are talking from a usability aspect. I am talking from a link juice aspect. Page rank passes only 85% thought a link, so if the home page passes PR of 1 thought each of its likes, the a page one click away only gets 0.85, 2 clicks 0.72, 3 clicks 0.61, 4 clicks 0.52.

It gets a bit more complicated when the pages link back to the home page, theough dopnt pass back as much either.

i have a simple explaination here.

http://thatsit.com.au/seo/tutorials/a-simple-explanation-of-pagerank

And her is a caculator that you can ry to see how it workes out.

http://www.webworkshop.net/pagerank_calculator.php