Folders in url structure?

[lfrazer123]

Hello,

Revamping an out-of-date website and am wondering if I need to include the folders (categories) in the url structure? The proposed structure has 8 main folders. I've been reading that Google is ok if the folder is not included in the url, but is it really? The hesitation I have is that the urls are getting long and the main folder only has only a sub folder beneath it. So, /folder-name/facility-name/treatment-overview. This looks too long, doesn't it?

Thanks!

[lfrazer123]

Thanks so much. It did help!

[david-johns-sheetlabels]

We've seen both versions work well, with an existing structure using folders we've seen rankings jump with basic on-page optimazation, but with some pages we've redirected the folders to a more simple page url using just the main topic as .com/(theme) and these pages have done we'll to rise to the top.

Here's a good article that shows some examples where using the category might be useful: https://moz.com/learn/seo/url

We sort of use the what's best for user approach in our structure and the organization of the folders allow that to happen for us well enough. With some of the folders, we've used a mixed approach and see success with both variations, with and without folder path, pretty equally.

That said, a lot of our top competitors use a short version for every page and it doesn't seem to hurt their rank-ability.  When we do beat them we attribute more to us offering a better offering to the individual search queries that make up the ranking group.

Here's another article that talks about using keyword friendly urls, which may include some sort of folldering method, or not https://www.hobo-web.co.uk/search-engine-friendly-urls/

In my completely unfounded opinion, search engines even now want to see quality signals, like people not leaving your site to go to another to find what they are looking for, for ranking pages, BUT I think they still rely on good "relevancy" to understand how to rank for terms in the first place. Hope this helps even a little