Hey Rob,
Just throwing some ideas in here.
Is it folder depth or distance in terms of number of clicks from Homepage that makes a difference? It was my understanding that using a very flat structure was pretty outdated SEO?
One of the issues I think that get overlooked a lot when considering URL structure is how to structure URLs so you can drill down easily into different types of content/categories/channels.
As I understand it Google see a slash as the root of a folder. You can see this in Analytics, a page with a slash at the end of it has a folder icon next to it and you are shown the stats for that folder. This means that if you remove the trailing slashes from actual pages you can see how separate areas of the site are performing as a whole.
Another argument for using a folders to structuring URLs could be that "link juice" spreads throughout the folder, perhaps even contextually. For instance if I have a folder which contains all of my pages about widgets then as my link profile to the pages in the widgets folder all the pages in that folder benefit. It seems logical that if an item was in a relevant directory that x contextual links then it would benefit.
As I said, just a bit food for thought, not sure if my theories are correct but I'd be interested what you guys think?
Neil.
