Many, Many Index Pages On One Site

[SEOHolicc]

Hello all,

I have a client that would like an index page for each product they sell. I'll give you some examples.

This is what I recommend:
www.sample.com/products/bluewidgets.html or
www.sample.com/products/redwidgets.html

This is what they want:
www.sample.com/bluewidgets/index.html
www.sample.com/redwidgets/index.html

They would like to change it like this for all of their different products, so that means they will have somewhere around 200 index.html pages, but in different folders. I don't think this is a good idea. Can anyone give me some advice or evidence on how this could be a bad idea. The designer says this is something that he heard about at an SEO conference and I have never heard of anything like this. How would a search engine see all of these different index.html pages.

[crankydave]

Basically what this will do is when a visitor types in a partial URL such as www.sample.com/bluewidgets they will automatically be taken to the index.html page by default.

I don't know that it will do any real harm but I don't see it as providing any real benefit. If anything it dilutes what little strength the keywords have in the URL with "index".

Other than "hearing something" about it, was there anything the designer offered as a "plus" for structuring files in this way?

Dave

[chowell]

Shorter URLs generally work better:

www.sample.com/bluewidgets/
www.sample.com/redwidgets/

They're still using an index.html page, because it's the default to load for a folder path, but it's omitted from the actual URL that the browser and search engine spiders see.

Be careful about using the URLs with and without the index.html at the end also or you'll dilute their SEO value. If you don't pick one URL and stick with it everywhere, you'll end up with duplicate pages/content, which the engines won't like.

[craigmn3]

Being a member of the Old School SEO club.....you know, before it died.... I always want to keyword my page names.

I would propbably use:

www.sample.com/widgets/bluewidgets.html
www.sample.com/widgets/redwidgets.html

this way the page name is the keyword.....and not just the path.

But SEO is dead...right?

[SemAdvance]

Originally Posted by chowell

Shorter URLs generally work better:

www.sample.com/bluewidgets/
www.sample.com/redwidgets/

Better gas mileage??

Browsers open the page sooner??

How would they work better?

Originally Posted by craigmn3

But SEO is dead...right?

Not for my clients and I

but if you can spread that rumor to the 99% of SEOs who cannot SEO a keyword term with 2,000 competing pages that would be cool!!!!

;->

[Webnauts]

An Accessibility/Usability and SEO Tip:

Domains should be 12 characters or less, and URLs should not be longer than 72 characters.

The reason is that you must focus on performance before preference and reduce the user's workload.

[themezoom]

Hi,

Not that anyone necessarily cares that it is MAtt Cutts, but there was some basic discussion about URL Canonicalization on Matts blog.

http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/seo-ad...onicalization/

There is a WHOLE BUNCH of deeper issues around this topic that I do not have time to go into here.

- Russell Wright

[gearoid]

Forget about it!
Who is telling who what to do?

While it can be done a number of effective ways, what is the point without a specific advantage?

[Nick Spence]

To my knowledge, using folders with index pages such as joessite.com/redwidgets and joessite/bluewidgets does not affect seo. However, as a marketing tool, it is clearer than joessite/products/redwidgets.html

~Nick

[Nick Spence]

My bad.

That should have been (of course):

joessite.com/bluewidgets

vs.

joessite.com/products/bluewidgets.html

~Nick

[edhan]

Originally Posted by craigmn3

Being a member of the Old School SEO club.....you know, before it died.... I always want to keyword my page names.

I would propbably use:

www.sample.com/widgets/bluewidgets.html
www.sample.com/widgets/redwidgets.html

this way the page name is the keyword.....and not just the path.

But SEO is dead...right?

Yes, I do agree with this method:
www.sample.com/widgets/bluewidgets.html
www.sample.com/widgets/redwidgets.html

This is more organised and you just have a single index to list out all the different widgets.

SEO dead? I don't think so.

[just-trying-to-help]

I'm confused,

Yes, I do agree with this method:
www.sample.com/widgets/bluewidgets.html
www.sample.com/widgets/redwidgets.html

This is more organised and you just have a single index to list out all the different widgets.

Lets pretend his url is www.bestonlinewidgets.com

now how does having url's like this benefit the site.
http://www.bestonlinewidgets.com/wid...uewidgets.html
http://www.bestonlinewidgets.com/wid...edwidgets.html

It would seem a bit spammy to me.

Wouldn't
www.bestonlinewidgets.com/bluewidgets.html
www.bestonlinewidgets.com/redwidgets.html
work just as well.
+ pages are in 1st level directory, not 2nd.
My 2 cents...
Ken

[edhan]

Originally Posted by just-trying-to-help

I'm confused,
Lets pretend his url is www.bestonlinewidgets.com

now how does having url's like this benefit the site.
http://www.bestonlinewidgets.com/wid...uewidgets.html
http://www.bestonlinewidgets.com/wid...edwidgets.html

It would seem a bit spammy to me.

Wouldn't
www.bestonlinewidgets.com/bluewidgets.html
www.bestonlinewidgets.com/redwidgets.html
work just as well.
+ pages are in 1st level directory, not 2nd.
My 2 cents...
Ken

You have a point too. But if you organise it under sub-folder for widgets, you can add other sub-folder like :
www.bestonlinewidgets.com/specialdeal/
www.bestonlinewidgets.com/newproduct/
etc.

Personally I prefer to organise with sub-folder instead of cluttering in the main folder. It is a matter of preference.

[tenkiya]

That's really simple to do. Look at what I've done on transpacificradio.com - that site's front-end has only 4 actual php flies and we use Apache rewrite rules to make all URLs look neat and clean. All content comes from the database and is spit out in one of three template pages.

In terms of both SEO and marketing, have neat and clean URLs is a huge advantage.

[MarcThai]

This looks like a transparent attempt to spam the SE's with lots of tempting Index pages. There may be no actual harm in it, but as others have said here, it does dilute your keyword strength. I would advise your client to do their business and let you do yours.

There is no good reason that I can think of to try and fool the SE's like this, and it could backfire instead.

Why not name the files with the product name instead? This would strengthen your chances of getting listed high in the SERPS.

We actually had this discussion a few weeks back from someone else, didn't we? Perhaps you should go back and read the responses to that discussion too.

[danners02]

organise your content into logical groups, then base your directory structure on that - simple.

www.mysite.com/widgets/ (list of widgets)
www.mysite.com/widgets/bluewidgets.html
www.mysite.com/widgets/redwidgets.html
www.mysite.com/widgets/on-sale/ (list widgets on sale)
www.mysite.com/widgets/on-sale/redwidgets.html
www.mysite.com/on-sale/ (all items on sale)
etc

If you have several versions of eg: blue widgets then it would be logical to sub-section this:

www.mysite.com/widgets/bluewidgets/ (list of blue widgets)
www.mysite.com/widgets/bluewidgets/style1.html
www.mysite.com/widgets/bluewidgets/style2.html
etc

The deeper you bury content in directory structures the harder it is to find
Your breadcrumb trail should also reflect your directory structure too

[JezC]

Why use "bluewidget/index.html" rather than "bluewidget.html"?

What if you want to change from HTML to PHP, or ASP? If you link to "bluewidget" consistently, then the page rank should not be damaged when you change the technology for delivering pages.

Additionally, you avoid distracting the user with the irrelevancy of the delivery technology, if the SE shows the page name as the link reference you use. For example, "bluewidget.asp" is less attractive to users than "bluewidget". Not a lot, but a little - for example, I've encountered users who won't use pages with ".cfm" suffix, because they didn't have ColdFusion installed on their own systems. I've also come across people who insist that pages with ".htm" won't render properly, because it is a subset of "html". Users pick up strange ideas and you want to confuse them as little as possible.

However, there are some weaknesses to this technology independence. For example, Browsers may follow a URL to a directory, but bookmarking will cause the full URI to the file name to be recorded. Ideally, browser bookmarking should record the URL to which you were sent, not the URI that you wind up on, to allow for the best technology independent delivery. Most browser developers insist that this is barking mad, so don't expect to see changes to bookmarking any time soon.

OTOH, how fast do you mutate the site? Usually the point at which this becomes important is the point when you want to move from, say, ASP to PHP. In that case, a rewrite rule that delivers index.php or bluewidget.php instead of index.asp or bluewidget.asp works just as well - so long as you do remember to do the 301 or 302 (in this case, a 301 is the "right" answer as you permanently intend to move).

SEO? Dead? No... But it is now more properly a subset of information architecture. It is possible to deliver the same content and get one lot ranked and the other lot buried, just because of the way that you build the page, the site and the links. It's still SEO, just not the way it used to be.

Personally, given a choice, I'll pick a technology-neutral directory naming system and include a bunch of rewrites from "index.htm", "index.php", "index.asp", etc so that users end up on the right page, whatever they think the delivery technology is, and whatever got bookmarked in the dawn of time.

Cheers, JeremyC.

[pathikbd]

Originally Posted by craigmn3

Being a member of the Old School SEO club.....you know, before it died.... I always want to keyword my page names.

I would propbably use:

www.sample.com/widgets/bluewidgets.html
www.sample.com/widgets/redwidgets.html

this way the page name is the keyword.....and not just the path.

URL names are one of the minor component for Search Engine Marketing. There are many things that are more important. If you search "Search Engines" in Google, you will find Google on the SERP. But, it does not have any text of "Search Engines" in their homepage or in the link.

However, for small sites (I mean fresh sites) small decisions are very essential. Therefore, I would also prefer keyword name for each page.

Rather than having all the products page in a single folder, you can cluster all the products in major categories as edhun suggested. That way you can come to the mid point where you have sacrificed a little and your client has sacrificed a little also.

Originally Posted by craigmn3

But SEO is dead...right?

Old School SEO is actually not dead. It's in coma :-). But SEO is not dead. Rather it now has a new life. It just got more juvenile and more dynamic as well as more challenging. It created a new industry with lots of diversified professionals like: copywriters, bloggers, market researchers, online support & marketing staffs, etc. who necessarily don't have to know what html is. But, the old school SEO was limited only to webmasters.