All page files in root? Or to use directories?

[Peter264]

We have thousands of pages on our website; news articles, forum topics, download pages... etc - and at present they all reside in the root of the domain /.

For example:

/aosta-valley-i6816.html
/flight-sim-concorde-d1101.html
/what-is-best-addon-t3360.html

We are considering moving over to a new URL system where we use directories.  For example, the above URLs would be the following:

/images/aosta-valley-i6816.html
/downloads/flight-sim-concorde-d1101.html
/forums/what-is-best-addon-t3360.html

Would we have any benefit in using directories for SEO purposes?  Would our current system perhaps mean too many files in the root / flagging as spammy?  Would it be even better to use the following system which removes file endings completely and suggests each page is a directory:

/images/aosta-valley/6816/
/downloads/flight-sim-concorde/1101/
/forums/what-is-best-addon/3360/

If so, what would be better: /images/aosta-valley/6816/ or /images/6816/aosta-valley/

Just looking for some clarity to our problem!

Thank you for your help guys!

[Theo-NL]

Matt Cutts states that the number of subfolders 'it is not a major factor': http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l_A1iRY6XTM

Furthermore, a blog I wrote about removing suffixes: http://www.finishjoomla.com/blog/5/does-adding-a-suffix-to-my-urls-affect-my-seo/

Another Matt Cutts regarding your seperate question about the keyword order: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gRzMhlFZz9I

Having some structure (in the form of a single subfolder) would greatly add to the usability of your website in my opinion. If you can manage to use the correct redirects (301) from your old pages to your new ones, I wouldn't see a clear SEO related reason not to switch.

[Peter264]

Dear Theo,

Thank you for your response - i found your article very interesting.

So, just to clarify - in our case, the best URL method would be:

/images/aosta-valley/6816/
/downloads/flight-sim-concorde/1101/
/forums/what-is-best-addon/3360/

This would remove the suffixes and also have the ID numbers at the end; placing the target keywords closer to the root of the URL; which makes a very slight difference...

EDIT: Upon thinking about it, I feel that the final keyword-targeted page would be more natural if it appeared at the end of the URL.  For example: /images/6816/aosta-valley/ (like you have done on your blog).

Also, should I limit the amount of hyphenated words in the URL?  For example in your blog, you have /does-adding-a-suffix-to-my-urls-affect-my-seo/ - perhaps it would be more concentrated and less spammy as /adding-suffix-urls-affect-seo/ ?

Let me know your thoughts.

Thank you for your help!

[Peter264]

Also, trailing slash?  Or no trailing slash?

Without

/downloads/878/fsx-concorde

With

/downloads/878/fsx-concorde/

[Peter264]

OK, so I have taken it upon myself to now have our URLs as follows:

/news/853/free-flight-simulator/

Anything else gets 301'd to the correct URL.  /news/853/free-flight-simulator would be 301'd to /news/853/free-flight-simulator/ along with /news/853/free-flight-sifsfsdfdsfmulator/ ... etc.

[Theo-NL]

I would personally place the keywords at the end for clarity. It indeed seems unnatural to have the id as the final part of the URL. Even if that does indeed cost you a tiny bit of 'keyword power', I would glady sacrifice that in exchange for a more user-friendly URL.

Limiting the amount of words in the URL does indeed make it look slightly less spammy, but slightly less user friendly as well. I guess this is just one of those 'weigh the pros/cons and decide for yourself'. Just make sure the URLs don't get rediculously long.

[Theo-NL]

To my knowledge there hasn't been a definitive conclusion on this one.

The general advice as I know it seems to be: they are equally good, pick one, and make sure the other one (with slash if you choose to go for 'without slash' or vice versa) redirects to the chosen one (to avoid duplicate content).