What is the recommended layout for a website as far as folders? Is website.com/folder/folder/pagename.php ok or is that too deep? What about website.com/folder/folder/folder/pagename.php I mean what’s the deepest a person should go as far as folders? What is better subdomain.website.com or website.com/folder/folder.pagename.php What does everyone recommend as far as search engines and usability?
dont go for deepest. nothing more than 2 levels down is my max. I see many people out there with 3,4 or 5 levels down and their pages not indexed.
5th level, still indexed. http://www.dirspace.com/dir/41/196.php I believe the deeper the level the more nice the page will be and eventually will be found and get high rankings. I'm not saying to go 10 pages deep, but I run various sites with 3rd level pages that rank well. 3rd level pages work great for me.
I've never had a problem with pages getting indexed on my old sites, even when as deep as 10 levels. However, If when I start a new site I always keep it to 2 levels or less. This is more to keep urls short to encourage other sites to link to my resources. They tend to do it more often and correctly when the levels are kept to a minimum.
Heres what I believe - a depth of no more than 2 or 3 - it doesnt matter for search, but it starts to look ugly - the idea scenario is the visitor being able to find the page they are looking for just by typing it logically. Ie: phoneshop.xx/nokia/n91 and phoneshop.xx/motorola/m301 etc
I won't take number of levels into consideration for my directory. If I need 15, there will be 15. Probably not all pages will be indexed, but I prefer to have a good structure.
I used a strategy of deeplinking my sitemap and all products pages in deep linking directories. Every page now has a higher PR than the first page. ) If your to deep link anything deep link your sitemap is my suggestion.