What product url is better from SEO perspective for an eShop
www.site.com/main-category/sub-category/sub-category2/product-name.html
www.site.com/products/product-name.html
www.site.com/product-name.html
Some people state that the last one since you make that page more important to the root of the domain. I would think its more logical to have them like the 1st.
What do you guys think? Does this really matter for SEO?
What @Tim Said.
If you decide that you must use folders for whatever reason, I would suggest not going more than 1 level deep. Usually, the reasoning to use folders is to clearly define the areas of your site. So for instance if your site sells products, has a blog and has users then you might want to go with a structure like this:
www.site.com/Product/...html
www.site.com/Blog/...html
www.site.com/Users/..html
That means your product page, using Tim's example, would be:
www.site.com/Product/acme-widget101.html
Again, I want to stress, I would only use this if you have different sections. Also, if the products are the most important part then this structure would be even better:
www.site.com/<product_name>.html
www.site.com/Blog/...html
www.site.com/Users/..html
That way products are as close to the top domain as possible and short for users but there is also some separation for your blog and account administration.
Google's guideline is each folder deeper you go, Google sees the content as less important and reduces is SEO value some. So keeping thing close to the top of the domain is good for users and good for Google.
Edit
I looked into it a bit more and I could not find Google specifically stating that going many directories deep would cause you to lose PageRank by level but I did find in Google's Search Engine Optimization Starter Guide document on page 8 this statement:
Avoid:
- having deep nesting of subdirectories like ".../dir1/dir2/dir3/dir4/dir5/dir6/ page.html"
- using directory names that have no relation to the content in them
This document from Google might also be helpful, http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?answer=76329.
The first question you should ask is, which style is easier for users that want to share your links? Always consider human visitors first.
For SEO, I'd recommend keeping the link as short as possible and introduce the name of the page as close to the 'far left' as you can. Lets take our favorite product, Acme Widgets!
www.site.com/acme-widgets.html
www.site.com/products/acme/widgets/acme-widgets/widget101.html
www.site.com/acme-widget101.html
The third link coincides much better with natural language that people use to search. In this case, someone looking for an Acme model 101 might search for:
acme 101 | acme widget 101 | acme model 101
In the third link, you've addressed two search cases. If the page was titled:
Acme's Famous Model 101 Widget
You would probably do quite well.
This has two benefits, the first of course making a nice, short simple link devoid of SEO gobly gook and secondly keeps you off Google's link/URL spam radar.
Please, think of the humans :) If you do, search engines will find you.
Firstly I would suggest removing the .html, it's not useful for search engines or users.
Generally, there is little difference between using folders and not using folders, if both URLs have the same keywords (i.e. acme-widgets-101 is roughly the same as acme/widgets/101).
You should look at what information the URL provides. Including category folders makes the hierarchy of your site clear to both search engines and users. Having all URLs at the root level does not provide this information, there is no way to determine the relationship between acme-widget-101 and widco-widget-xds3.
So I would suggest using a logical folder structure. Avoid nesting folders too deep - long URLs will start making things worse again.
