domain.com/page.html or domain.com/page/ ?

For our new free hosting directory, we initially had the folders/categories loading as "freehostingdirectory.com/free-php-hosting/", but then we did a few tweaks and decided "freehostingdirectory.com/free-php-hosting.html" was better. Unfortunately, google rankings dropped after a few days, but we can't figure out which of our tweaks caused it to drop.

In general, what's better for seo? freehostingdirectory.com/free-php-hosting.html

or

freehostingdirectory.com/free-php-hosting/

?

Thanks!

 

Internal structure depends on a few things, I also prefer to use a file name w/extension since I believe Google adds more value to it then strictly directory ending urls. I never use the default index.html, I always change it to something relevant to the page.

 

Hmm.. that's what I thought.. but there seems to be a pretty big chance google dropped our rankings based on going from /free-php-hosting/ to free-php-hosting.html. Is that possible? What do most of the bigger sites use?

 

When did you fall down the rankings? I believe Google rolled out a new algorithm around a week or so ago, seemed to turn SERPs on their heads... That might have something to do with your problem. Although I personally prefer /page/ than page.html - mainly because it looks cleaner and AFAIK doesn't cause any penalties to your site.

 

We bought the domain a little over a month ago.. and then ranked pretty high in rankings out of the box (as it has been raking of years). Then we put our new site up and started ranking even better. A few days later we did a few tweaks (including /cat/ -> cat.php), and that's when our rankings dropped off the map. The domain is freehostingdirectory.com, and it has been ranked top 10 for 'free hosting directory' for the last half a decade. As of a little over a week ago, we completely dropped off for that (and other) keywords.

Spider-Man ... You think there is a smaller chance of penalty with domain/cat/ then domain/cat.html ?

 

Anyone else have any input? I still can't figure out which way is the correct/better way?

 

It really doesn't matter much really, and any difference will be minor at best. I personally go with the directory-style structure just in case I change the language being used (static HTML to PHP or ASP or ASP.NET or whatever) so I don't have to worry about dealing with a lot of 301 redirects.

 

Better to use domain.com/page/,
It does not allow any one to see which script you have used to implement the page.

 

One. Question. Why do you even like it there. The directory after the domain?

 

You question is little bit confusing,
Still what i get from you comments,
as per you need to visit this link, this link is the answer of your question.

SEO DIRECTORY

 

Remember:
1) The file extension doesn’t matter and never considered a factor while ranking- You can choose any extension like .. php, html, htm, asp .. You can even use dpking as your extension.. but don’t use something like .exe extension.
2) Google dnt care about the link depth (i.e. the number of slashes in your permalink won’t matter) So provide search engines with something good and related to the page.

Using something relevant is although a great idea !!

 

Well like when you go to www.configurationstation.com there is no index.php or what ever. but if you put the index.php on the end it looks bad. That is what I am talking about. No redirecting is what I like. Just one clean domain name. No /blahblah

 

Thanks for all the feedback guys. The dir site itself doesn't have /blahblah, I was talking specifically for the categories in the directory.

 

LOL. That was an example by the way. Good luck with the site.

 

I know.. i was using it as an example too By the way, I couldn't load your domain to see what you were talking about.. so that might be what's causing the confusion. Your site times out for me :\