Question about website folders

lolseo · Nov 29, 2017

Hi all

Im working on a site that has a url structure like this

homepage.com
homepage.com/services/service1/
homepage.com/services/service2/

the url homepage.com/services/ returns a 404

My thought is to delete the /services/ folder and restructure the website as
homepage.com/service1/
homepage.com/service2/
etc

I'd of implement 301's

There is not even a need to create a page and content for the /services/ url - as the homepage should contain all this information.

What would you guys recommend?

MatthewGraham · Nov 29, 2017

If it ain't broke, don't fix it. If it's already set up with the /services/ directory, I wouldn't touch it unless there's some specific reason why it will benefit you. Restructuring websites over minor things like that is probably going to make you bash your head against your desk and is unlikely to have any real tangible benefit.

If there's no reason to have anything on homepage.com/services/ (e.g., a directory or something), either leave it as a 404 (unless for some reason there are links to this page, in which case... why are there links to this page) or 301 it (probably to the homepage).

lolseo · Dec 4, 2017

Hi thanks for the reply.

My only reason for asking is because, I had been told that having the /services/ folder which is empty, as its just a 404, would dilute the link juice.

When I was working in house for a large ecommerce furniture company, an outside agency removed a /furniture/ folder (which again was empty, just a 404 page) and it had a big uplift on visibility.

That site had 1000's of products however, whereas the site im currently working on has 44 pages.

seeplusplus · Dec 4, 2017

The first plan was better.

You get a 404 though because you have no index page there, the server will always look for an index.html file first, index.php second and so on. If the directory has no index file, then you get a 404, the server doesn't know what you want to show the visitor.

I'd do it the first way, and use the index.xxx pages for some content about all the services within that category, so people can navigate down to the particular service they want.

lolseo · Dec 4, 2017

seeplusplus said:
The first plan was better.

You get a 404 though because you have no index page there, the server will always look for an index.html file first, index.php second and so on. If the directory has no index file, then you get a 404, the server doesn't know what you want to show the visitor.

I'd do it the first way, and use the index.xxx pages for some content about all the services within that category, so people can navigate down to the particular service they want.

So actually create a page for domain.com/services/ put some content and links to everything under there?

bartosimpsonio · Dec 4, 2017

If the number of services is limited, then either way is ok

But for a large number of services you probably will need /$CATEGORY/service anyway.

A flat structure (having everything in the root) is almost never good.

If you only have 2 services it's ok to put them in the root IMO.

Remember: URLs are part of the SEO. If you can't type a URL, that's a negative signal. The more stuff you put in the URL, the harder it is to type.

FreakenSEOsmh · Dec 4, 2017

i would put an index.php on the /services/ folder and have it have links to the inner services, would also put some text content on that index.php file

lolseo · Dec 5, 2017

Thanks for the input guys.

Im going to go with adding a page for the /services/ url. The website has 6 categories that sit in the /services/ folder and then sub categories under each of them.

Thanks for the feedback. Much appreciated.

seokimberly · Dec 5, 2017

Fix the services page instead of deleting.

manbooobs1 · Dec 5, 2017

First plan is beest

Question about website folders

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