When i started as the in-house Head of SEO in my organization one of my first tasks was to plan and design our next Brand website from the ground up so that it’s SEO compliant, or SEO optimised and rank well.
From a Dev perspective it had to have all the bells and whistles and from a Design point of view it needed to be very eye catching and user-friendly. So working with these two departments is a challenge for any SEO as these guys historically do not really care much for SEO and herein lays the challenge that i enjoy every day.
Once the website is live as a combined effort, it ranks well, brings in revenue and you get good ROI, everyone starts to understand why SEO needs to be implemented RIGHT from the start in the planning phase already.
I had a few different views on how i would go about designing the file and folder layout but i needed to do this in conjunction with all the other stakeholders in the company which sometimes can make your life as in-house SEO very, very interesting. 
In order to minimize the collateral damage to the Dev Department and award winning Creative Department’s ego’s i had to come up with something simple, easy, pretty and yes –> Search Engine friendly. Now, i have seen many different ways of building a file and folder structure but I wanted one that would be best suited to our unique brand and products.
This was it:
www.ourdomain.com/top-keyword/
www.ourdomain.com/top-keyword/secondary-keyword/
Yes, i did not include .html, .asp, .aspx or .php for a reason. The URL above is clean, sexy and very powerful from a search phrase perspective. I could also have done it a few other ways like:
www.ourdomain.com/top-keyword.html
www.ourdomain.com/top-keyword/secondary-keyword.html
or
www.ourdomain.com/best-keyword.html
www.ourdomain.com/2nd-best-keyword.html
www.ourdomain.com/3rd-best-keyword.html
I realised that if i use a file structure like as per my 1st example i could have my secondary-keyword tie in with my top-keyword as in
www.ourdomain.com/blue-widgets/blue-widget-tips/ (effectively killing two birds with one stone)
Some people could argue that this could be overkill from a keyword spam perspective but it’s not. Google loves it and we rank 5th on page one out of 31 million results. Reason being that, had i done the structure like this: www.ourdomain.com/blue-widgets/tips/ I would’ve missed the opportunity to slot in another key-phrase like blue-widget-tips which is a different key-term to blue-widgets all together and you could effectively rank for both whilst ranking for just the “tips” key-term would be a waste of energy.
Why did i not use this method? www.ourdomain.com/blue-widgets/blue-widget-tips.html (including a file extension)
Because I do not feel it’s necessary for everyone to see the platform my site is on at first glance (although a view source can tell you quick enough) and I also don’t want Google to index a less than sexy URL. Let’s face it: www.ourdomain.com/blue-widgets/blue-widget-tips.html or www.ourdomain.com/blue-widgets/blue-widget-tips/index.html isn’t as neat or clean as as www.ourdomain.com/blue-widgets/blue-widget-tips/
In actual fact, the real URL looks like this: www.ourdomain.com/blue-widgets/blue-widget-tips/index.aspx but using the .htaccess file I am effectively “hiding” the file extension because it doesn’t NEED to be there. (in a good way)
Well, Google loves it. There is no right or wrong here, and there are many ways to skin a cat but this file structure was pretty, easy to remember, easy to index, looks pretty in the SERPS and it works.
So there you go! My first post!
Cheers,
Etienne
24 comments ↓
Well written and no doubt informative, although the text is kind of confusing for a non-SEO. Still, Etienne has even managed to teach a tech-dumb souttie like me how to make sites more search-friendly.
Nice post Etienne.
I agree 100% that the method you’ve outlined is a great way to keep your site url’s tidy, effective, and expandable without being overly spammy.
Congrats on the new blog and your 1st post, I look forward to more like this.
Nice post my man. I’ve seen a few, not many, posts where folder structure is stressed as a good SEO plan. Many seem to forget this.
Some CMS’s have this build in, where you can stipulate your folder structure, while others use the title of your post. If your keywords are in there, then it is much better.
But there is nothing like a self designed folder stucture for good SEO.
However, I do believe the the popular CMS packages are slowly catching up.
Great post Etienne – I’ll be learning a lot from this place
Great post.
Look forward to seeing more.
The right folder structure is the starting point of a succesful SEO website.
As always, good info from the SEO boss…
Nice one Etienne, interesting, even for a non tech person like myself.
easy to follow layout and train of thought. Thanks
Et,
Outstanding first post. Very informative with a nice mixture of tech and non-tech SEO information. Looking forward to seeing what you push out on this site in the future.
Keep em coming.
Oh and glad to see you have a blog now
This is an old post but still only one of the few useful results for “folder or .html seo” and similar. Thanks for this information your conclusions were the same I had, but i wasn’t sure if that is the same for big sites with great amounts of content. I was wondering if you could get better results having the .html at the end of the file as it is seen as file and not as folder. Wouldn’t the search engine see it the /keyword/keyword2/ as folder and expect some files in that folder?
Let’s say you have some categories and group them up and just put several .html files in one folder
/keyword1/keyword1_1.html /keyword1/keyword1_2.html
/keyword1/keyword1_3.html
/keyword2/keyword2_1.html
/keyword2/keyword2_3.html
instead of different folders you have files. Maybe the files next to each other have an effect if google has them in the index and they know that they’re there. So the “group folder” is indexed and all the little .html files next to each other instead of folders.
I had great success with small sites and the .html strategy. On medium size pages it worked well aswell…
We should ask Mister Matt Cutts about this
Thank you for this post David. I have had success with both the .html and folder url’s. I just love the neatness of http://www.domain.com/descriptive-keyword/descriptive-keyword.html.
I think this answered my question. So google indexs the actual url link and not the file name. I could have everything in folders with index.html files in each folder and its better than using a filename right? This way it ends up domain.com/keyword
Which is best for SEO purposes?:
domain/country1/region1
domain/country1/region1/
domain/country1/region1/hotel1
domain/country1/region1/hotel1/
What are your thoughts on this , whether forward slash “/” is must present at the end of the urls
Hi there, for me it just looks neater and Google seems to like it in my experience. So, folders seem to work well for me
Hi there, thanx for the question. This one: domain/country1/region1/hotel1/ would be the winner in my opinion. The trailing slash rounds it off nicely and completes the URL.
Great article! It was just what i’ve been looking for. Could i translate it to romanian an post it to my website with link to you?
Kind regards!
Sure, just be clear who was the original author. Thanks for asking and good luck!
Great, i’ll send you a link when it’s done. Thank you!
Thanks For your Valuable Answers – goodseo
This is a gem of a site, im a htaccess newbie, and im using the
http://www.domain.com/descriptive-keyword/descriptive-keyword.html.
structure for maximum SEO effect!
thanks.
Thank you!
Good luck with your structure and i agree with your approach too!
Thanks ,good article
i have dout
i am targeting keyword ‘wayanad resort’
wayanad is destination name
1) domain.com/wayanad/resort/
or domain.com/wayanad/wayanad-resort/
which one is best
Hi there, domain.com/wayanad-resort/ should be good to go! But any of thiose is good enough, just make it as simple as possible for /oogle to index and for people to read and remember!
thanks u r valuable advice
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