Folder Hierarchy Structure Theory

[OrionGroup]

Hi,

I was wondering if search engines, in particular, Google, actually use folder hierarchy to determine how important a particular page on a website might be for ranking purposes, or is on-site page inter-linking only taken into consideration.

I know that external and internal links help to support the authority or 'page rank' of a particular webpage on a website. In a typical Wordpress installation, for example, it is easy to create a page and assign child-pages to support it. These sub-pages would naturally link to their parent pages via menu and/or body links, so they would theoretically 'support' the authority of the parent folder/page.

My question is... would search engines see the parent folder page as more authoritative than a child-page, even without a lot of on-site interlinking of child and parent pages, just because it is higher up in the folder structure?

For example, I have a client who has a Wordpress website, but is using a plugin to make all pages have a .htm ending. The site is fairly 'flat', hierarchally speaking and does not use any /folders/, but the pages are inter-linked.

In the following scenario, there are 4 testimonial pages... 1 main one and 3 supporting pages.  The 3 supporting pages are linked to from the parent page and vice versa.

• /testimonials.htm
• /testimonials-quality.htm
• /testimonials-price.htm
• /testimonials-ease.htm

I was wondering if it is worth suggesting to my client that we remove that plugin so that we can more easily employ the natural folder hierarchy functions of Wordpress, such as this scenario:

• /testimonials/
• /testimonials/quality/
• /testimonials/price/
• /testimonials/ease/

Would the loss of 'link juice' due to redirects and the work that would be involved would be worth the possible ranking increases of potentially structuring the website better... or are we fine just relying on the existing page interlinking to show the search engines what are the important parent pages?

[irvingw]

"My question is... would search engines see the parent folder page as more authoritative than a child-page, even without a lot of on-site interlinking of child and parent pages, just because it is higher up in the folder structure?"

No, search engines wouldn't see it that way. An internal page can always outrank a parent page if optimized better.

That main page would be considered authoritative because of the interlinking from longer tail same keyword child pages referencing the main page you want to rank for with short tail main keyword phrase. Parent/child I call a power center, internal pages semantically supporting the parent page and passing pr and anchor texts to the parent page.

[irvingw]

Also this is best

• /testimonials
• /testimonials-quality
• /testimonials-price
• /testimonials-ease

[My-Favourite-Holiday-Cottages]

From a navigation point of view, being able to erase the end of a url and end up at a parent is excelent for UX. As is not having to recall a file type (the .htm)

It wouldn't thus entirely surpise me if google favoured such a structure.

I expect however, google infurs such relationships from your onsite interlinking more. - Breadcumbs for example would probably have more effect. (I do belive there is a markup for them in webmaster tools, or at least was one being beta'd recently)

I personaly wouldn't do such a change less there were other issues being fixed at the same time. (Improving UX would count). Make sure of course to do you 301's and change the internal links if you do.