Does a capitalized subfolder affect a URL's SEO value?

[Scratch_MM]

This post is deleted!

[STPseo]

It is only okay to mix case in the main part of the domain. Caps do matter with the folders. The URLs above are different. I found this article which had a good explanation:

Both DigitalFamily.com and digitalfamily.com will take you to the same web page, but if you have an address that **extends beyond**the .com part, the case does matter.

For example: DigitalFamily.com/Books and DigitalFamily.com/books are not the same address — the one with the capital B will not work.

The technical reason is that most web servers are case-sensitive and the part of the address that comes after the .com is based on the name of the folder or the filename that page resides in on the server.

Here is the entire article.

I also did an experiment with my personal website:

http://www.wretchedetcher.com/etching-gallery/etching-gallery.html - good link

vs.

http://www.wretchedetcher.com/Etching-Gallery/Etching-Gallery.html - 404 page not found

I would follow the guidelines and use lower case.

[DanHill]

Custom modify the CMS to use a lowercase 'p' and keep all of it lowercase.  Your other option(as Rand says in that article) is do 301 redirect to an all lowercase URL. Mixed case URL's should only be used for PPC.

I realise this does not answer your question directly, so to answer I'd guess that less capitalization would be better(if I had to go with one or the other).

edit : ppc no longer supporting mixed cases, thanks Stephan

[STPseo]

I would also ad that it looks like Google adwords is only allowing lower case in the URLs. So if you are using a cap in a folder you would have to set up a redirect for any Google adword campaign that uses it in the URL.

[RyanKent]

Hi Krista.

Stephan offers good advice. Since you are at the point of adjusting URLs I would add a bit:

Which format is better?

www.client.com/Pages/keyword-phrase.aspx

or

www.client.com/Pages/Keyword-Phrase.aspx

A simple rule to follow, always use lower case letters in URL folders and page names.

Another improvement would be to never use technology extensions in page names. The .aspx portion of your URL offers no value to users nor search engines. It makes your URL appear longer and more complicated. Drop it. The best URL for your page would be:

www.client.com/pages/keyword-phrase

All major CMS software can work with these standards. The adjustments should be relatively simple. If your software does not support this change, you are likely using a custom CMS or an outdated one. Either way I would recommend you use CMS software which is flexible enough to allow you to comply with known best practices.