Link structure

[BritishARMY]

Howdy all.

I am just starting up a small site as a little side project, and I have been looking at the structure of the links and what is best for SEO (as this site will have many pages). I found some great information here regarding how deep your pages should be within your site. To sum it up, it says that have you 'deepest' page only 3 clicks away from the home page will allow link juice/pr to flow. So I have decided to base the site links around that kind of structure (below). My index page will have links to regions in a certain country, these pages will then have links to the cities in the region, and these pages will have links to city-specific pages.



Anyway I have a question regarding this. Does it matter how the folders are arranged? For example, if it was like this: www.site.com/spain/andalucia/malaga/beaches.html is that better than www.site.com/andalucia/malaga/beaches.html? Is the extra folder 'bad' in the eyes of search engines, or 'good'? I'm thinking it is useful for me and possibly the visitors, as it groups the regions by country, however it adds another folder and I am unsure as to whether this is bad (like having the pages linked deeper).

I was going to delete this and not bother posting but I may as well get some input from you guys.

Thanks!

Tom.

[ClaytonL]

Having another folder in the URL will have zero influence as far as the SEs are concerned.

[hooperman]

Having another folder in the URL will have zero influence as far as the SEs are concerned.

My thoughts, too.

[BritishARMY]

Excellent, thanks for your replies guys. I think I'll add the extra folder as it will help the visitors when they see the URL... and it'll help me keep it organised.

[JJMcClure]

EI think I'll add the extra folder as it will help the visitors when they see the URL

That's exactly the right way to think about it, put the visitor first since Google wants us to, that's what they're looking for. Your site linking structure would have to be a spaghetti junction before it would hurt your SEO, apply good principles of Usability and you can't really go wrong.