Question About Category/folder Structure.

3 replies
  • SEO
  • |
I have read some articles about flattening site structure, I also read chapter 6 on this from The Art of SEO, where they also suggest that on sites with 10000 or below pages users, should be able to get to any page in 3 clicks.

On our site (removed), I have a hierarchical structed that I believe its good way for customers to find specific products based on brand, condition, and printer type.

So we have:
New Printers
-- Laser Printers
---- HP Laser Printers
---- Lexmark Laser Printers
-- Color Laser Printers
---- HP Color Laser Printers
---- Lexmark Color Laser Printers


The entire menu is shown everywhere, so it actually takes you 1 click to get to the specific category.

Benefits I see:
1. I could add SEO content to each page, and target specific keywords related to brands, and condition:
I could optimize one page for HP Printers, and another for HP Refurbished Printers, I could optimize one page for HP Printers and another for Lexmark Printers.
Am I wrong with this assumption? I could do link building campaings based on the more important keywords for a specific category.


2. And the big question is about urls, if you see the deeper level, url is something like:
Example Domain
/refurbished-printers
/laser-refurbished-printers
/hp-laser-refurbished-printers

still the user can get to the lowest category in one click, but can this be keyword stuffing?


3. If the answer to Nr 2 is a big yes, "Warning", I could flatten more the category and urls
and instead of the long url on Nr 2, I could just put:
/hp-laser-refurbished-printers

technically possible with the CMS I am using



thanks a lot for your help!
#category or folder #question #structure
  • Profile picture of the author SEO Power
    You are over-thinking it and spending too much time worrying about trivial things. There is nothing wrong with the way your site is currently organized.
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    • Profile picture of the author levalenci
      Originally Posted by SEO Power View Post

      You are over-thinking it and spending too much time worrying about trivial things. There is nothing wrong with the way your site is currently organized.
      I thought that I might be doing keyword cannibalization on my urls because they are too long and more or less repeated, but if you take a look each folder(category), has a specific set of products and therefore it makes sense the way its
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      • Profile picture of the author SEO Power
        Originally Posted by levalenci View Post

        I thought that I might be doing keyword cannibalization on my urls because they are too long and more or less repeated, but if you take a look each folder(category), has a specific set of products and therefore it makes sense the way its
        From your example, there is a chance of keyword cannibalisation happening for "laser printers" and "colour laser printers" because they both appear in the titles of several different pages. So, using "laser printers" to illustrate, you may find the "hp laser printers" page ranking higher than the "laser printers" category when you do a search for "laser printers" in Google.

        To avoid this, make sure every backlink with the anchor text "laser printers" points to the "laser printers" category and vice versa. If that was my site, I would use variations of "laser printers" in the titles of the pages under the "laser printers" category.

        That said, the current setup of your site is termed 'siloing' and it's one of the recommended on-page SEO methods you can use to give your site a better chance to rank higher.
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