I have bought and installed a new script for software downloads with a big database, and by default(as I bought the script) currently I have the following structure: mydomain.com/categoryA/ (or B,C,D..) - which lists all of the programs for the particular category A,B,C,D... mydomain.com/company1/ (2,3,4...) - which lists all of the programs by the particular company 1,2,3,4... Till here this is good. But the program details page doesn't belong into any company or category folder: mydomain.com/program_name_a.html (b,c, etc..) This is all accomplished by htaccess of course. Now the question is, whether this is ok for search englines, or should the program.html belong to at least one or both company and category something like this: mydomain.com/categoryA/program_name_b.html OR mydomain.com/company1/program_name_b.html OOR Maybe Even: mydomain.com/categoryA/company1/program_name_b.html ?? Most Probably the later cases are better for SEO, but does it make that much of a difference? Should I leave it like the way it is now, or should I try to change it to some case I have mentioned?
I have a question. Will your URL actually look like ".../company1/..." or will it look like ".../nike-shoes/..."? If it will look like ".../company1/...", so you will be able to get the ID from URL with .htaccess regex (something like ".../company(0-9)+/", then I think you can omit it. If your URL actually contains a URL-friendly name of the company (like ".../nike-shoes/..:"), then I would put some extra work into that and try to achieve that kind of URLs. I hope you know what I mean.
If you want your site top of google, forget about your sript, use it but "behind the scene" and place a few pages, just pure old fshioned "hand made" pages on top level of your site, then add the sript pages on second level with as many links you want from top level.
no it actually looks like "/nike-shoes/" thanks for pointing that out and sorry that I didn't clarify. Also the program_name.html contains the company as a keyword. what I meant by company1,2,3, categoryA,B,C.. and program_nameA.html those are the actual names of the companies, categories and programs accordingly. May sound like a nice suggestion, but my main domain page is dynamic so I'm afraid I cannot touch that Currently it is like: mydomain.com/company1 - which lists all of the programnames.html mydomain.com/categoryA - which lists all of the programnames.html mydomain.com.programnameA.html So should I change my structure then?