SEO experts: Question for you...
 

When building a website in the past, I have always used a directory for every page, and then named the page index.html so that to reach the page all that was needed was to type the directory name after the domain, for example:

www.mysite.com/tour

instead of

www.mysite.com/tour.html

Does this have any negative effect on SEO? When the SE crawls the site, does it rank lower a site where every page is called index.html?

I always use .html pages

In a word, no.
However, Google *may* give /tour slightly lower relevance as it's a sub-directory vs. a page in the root directory. I'd suggest using the method (/tour vs. /tour.html) that best fits the usability for the site and your own preference. The overall SEO effects, if negative, will be minimal.

Thanks for the input!

I use all .html pages

never thought about it, thanks!

I use .htm (shorter, saves bandwith :) )

:1orglaugh :1orglaugh

Does not matter, really!

Egomancer

It has no effect for .html or .htm vs. directory in google. However, dynamic extensions like .api or .php could have a negative effect. Also if you have a numbers in the url it will have a slightly negative effect. A question mark in the URL is a big no no.

In msn, it's better to have just relevant keywords in the url with as few other characters as possiable. That's why i like to use the directory structure.

I was under the impression that shit like that didn't matter anymore, that se are smart enough now to know dynamic content

In fact, a lot of the results for my wifes name come up as pages that are heavy php, with ? and & all over them...first page results too..and a lot of them are from the same sites, different id's and shit

Hey, I've been reading your site forever...I love it. But, I must disagree about the .php and ? and &, etc. I kill the search engines with TONS of php pages with variables in them. Doesn't matter anymore.

dir. pages do get less preference than root domain pages.

:thumbsup

I could certainly be wrong about the .php and .API. I tested .api a long while back and that's when I made the switch. It may not still apply.

On numbers, I had t noticed a difference either, but Matt Cutts said in this interview:

performancing.com/node/397

I wouldnt bother with year/month/day in blog urls; I would just use the first few words from the title of the post in the url

Now, taking SEO advice from Matt may be retarded, but I figure it couldn t hurt to follow that guideline.

We did testing in november '05 on the question marks in URLs and the pages were not indexed as quickly. That indicated to us that the pages were (slightly) less trusted.

Thats certainly not to say you cant rank a page with the variables in the URLs, it probably means very little in the SERPs.

But my feeling is, why not take them out if you can with a simple mod rewrite?

All in all, though, youre better off just getting one more link than worrying too much about the URL structure.

every byte counts

why am I hearing the Monty Python song "every sperm is sacred"


have I consumed too much caffeine today?

ifffffffffff a sperm gets wasted, God Gets Quite Irate.

Hey QuadsZilla good to see you here. :thumbsup

Did I say that? I didn't say that. Did I? No, no I don't think so.