Site structure and SEO

We are putting together a new site and we are arguing over the organisation of the pages. We’ll be offering five services – each with different type of dynamic content. We’ve also created 5 info pages about the services - each of these I’ve optimised for a specific keyword/combination.

From the point of view of good SEO - which solution is better?

A) to put the description pages directly on the domain root, linked from the index page i.e. -

www. sitename.com/service1.htm
www. sitename.com/service2.htm ...and so on.

On each page anchor text would link to the appropriate service's index page in its own folder i.e:
.sitename/service1/index.php


B) to put all the html “static” pages into an “info” folder i.e.

www. sitename.com/info/service1.htm ....and so on

Each page would then link to the appropriate service's own folder (just like in version A)

Of course we could put all the static pages into the relevant service folders but we want to seperate static pages from dynamic ones.

The question is: which version would be better indexed by the search engines? I reckon version A is better - my colleague thinks it should make no difference and version B is neater.

Could someone advise us please???

B all the way. You want static "kw named" .html(.htm) pages. Not only will you do well in google if you build content and backlinks but you should do well in Yahoo right off the back. If you need help convert the dynamic pages into static look at the link for Statc Conversion at the bottom of my sig. We crawl your site it saves a static version on in the proper site structure.

Got to give it to you for trying luxury. You do plug your static conversion tool very well.

If you structure your dynamic links in a well formated way, there is no reason why a dynamic site using something like mod_rewrite to optimise the link shouldnt compete if not beat a static page.

Either is fine imho. Your link structure will make all the difference in how fast and deep your site is crawled. I have more success with a flat file layout but either works. From a file organization standpoint on a large site or site that will eventually be large, I would definitely go with the folder option for ease in changes/maintenance and organizational purposes. For small sites this would really be a waste.


I personally agree with Luxery and I don't have a static tool...lol

I think standard htm/html/shtml files are best. Personally I use and recommend shtml as it offers more options. I use it specifically because I can load menus and multi page content/links etc so I only have to change one file in a particular section. If your not familiar with server side commands used with shtml this can give you some help http://www.ssi-developer.net/ssi/

It really offers the best of both worlds i.e. static and dynamic without a whole bunch of hoopla.

In the end, your file type should really be chosen by the present, and more important, future needs of your site.

Cheers

Regardless of whether you use folders or not, your link structure is what matters. If it takes 2 or 3 hops to get to a page, that is not as good as a direct link to the page. If you do use folders, name the folders appropriately, so you get maximum kwd benefit.

Check out the thread on Wordnet - http://forums.seochat.com/t22499/s.html - it can give you some great tips for structuring your information architecture in the best possible way from the SEs point of view.

Keep these in mind:

- Few clicks away from the home page
- Wide > Narrow information structure
- Complimentary and careful interlinking
- Proper anchor text for internal links

Thank you all! We've gone with the folder structure, so we put all static html pages into one folder. For the dynamic pages we'll be using ssi – but those pages will hopefully be updated constantly as users will be able to contribute.



As to WordNet, thanks for the suggestion – seems a good idea, but none of our keywords have any matches. The theme of our site is diy (as in home improvement) – which is quite a wide subject, so I’m surprised it isn’t in there (not even home improvement!). But we’ll be using WordNet in the future so many thanks!