What directory should a site go in (url structure)?

[Mario.Souza]

Hi All,

The is the first actual SEO campaign i've worked on and I had a few question about where the site should live on the server and url structure. The site is in WP and we're using Yoast SEO.

Anyway the site lives in a a folder called Coastal, which is a child of the WWW folder. So the permalink of the homepage is mcoastalwindows.com/coastal/. The URL is mycoastalwindows.com. The thing is I can still get to the homepage or any of the pages on the site by typing in the /coastal/. Another example is permalink mycoastalwndows.com/coastal/siding/ and url mycoastalwindows.com/siding/. The urls always display without the /coastal/, so I'm not too worried about people linking to them, but Yoast puts a canonical element to the permalink and always includes the /coastal/. Also I'm seeing that Google displays a lot of the urls with the /coastal/, which is an issue seeing as we don't link to the pages that way.

My original thought was to solve this at the source and just move everything out of the coastal directory, but the developer swears that it's more secure being in another folder especially with WP. What would you all do and what is best practice? Would you move everything out of the coastal folder, 301 re-direct, do something with. htaccess, or another solution?

Appreciate the input thanks!

[customerparadigm.com]

Mario -

The biggest issue I see is that your developer thinks that having content not in the www / home directory is somehow more secure. I think this is a red flag, as literally 20% of the websites on the Internet run WordPress (including my site).

While there are security issues from time to time that crop up, keeping up to date with patches, upgrades and server settings will mitigate this.

Best practice, hands-down, is to keep your home page content in the www folder, and not in the /coastal/ folder. In a sub-folder, it's not going to perform as well from an SEO perspective. And it could hurt you, as it looks like you might be trying to "stuff" in a keyword or two.

I would recommend moving the site into the www / home directory, and setting things up so that this is the primary URL. Yes, use 301 redirects on the older links so that you don't have 404 errors on the site…

Hope this helps!
-- Jeff

[TranslateMediaLtd]

Hi Mario,

I agree with Jeff. You need to move your site up a folder.

You could write rules that remove the '/coastal/' from the canonical URL for the Yoast plugin, 301 redirect /coastal/* to /* etc - but this is really messy.

It's fine to have your site on the root domain....it's no less secure.

[Brett-Harland]

Hi,

I agree with Jeff, developers seem to have an inherited paranoia problem with Word press and security. This can be solved by using a security plug in like word fence.

Word press is built with security in mind its weakness is 3rd party plug ins so beware when installing any always look for more popular properly supported ones.

Hope this helps

Brett

[MikeTek]

Hi Mario,

The Mozzers above are right - your best move is to get rid of the redundant /coastal/ subfolder.

Your developer is incorrect. There is no security benefit to the subfolder.

I would suggest, to ensure security, that you instead have a thorough read through this guide to Hardening WordPress and follow these methods, as they will cover you for the vast majority of hack attacks.

Also, keep regular backup copies of your database if your hosting company doesn't do this automatically. Between that and backups of the website files, you'll be well covered in the event of a hack.

Best,
Mike

[Mario.Souza]

Thanks for the help guys! Appreciate it.