On February 26, 2009, Google software engineer Matt Cutts collected questions on Google Moderator and answered many of them on video.
Katy Bairstow from London asked:
There seems to be little impact on human visitors where in the site’s structure a given page is, so:
Is it better to keep key content pages close to root, or have them deep within a topical funnel-structure, e.g.:
food/fast-food/burgers/hamburgers.php
source
I totally agree with Matt. The more clicks people have to do to find or reach a certain contetn, the higher the chances of them getting lost and clicking away from your site. That said, the lesser clicks the better it is indeed!
@MrDaveFelton you're correct. SEO is all about common sense. You have to look at it from a visitor stand point.
That doesn't actually answer the question. You can get to, or link to, a page that has an extensive directory structure from the home page, or anywhere. The question really asks if Google uses the directory as a hierarchy to determine the content of the page? I think it would, but perhaps not….
Yes I agree with dross202. I think she was asking if it was better to keep certain pages within a directory that relate to each other. Many frameworks allow directories to skip about even though the pages are directly linked. If they we're linked and also shown to stem from the same directory, is this preferable?
Thanks for the informative video Matt, you always make it so simple to understand.
Good Question !! I will also add that from the long tail point of view it should not be that important but I see working better when main keywords are close to the main index page with its important metas as well