I'm constructing a site using VSD (not published yet) and I've run into a problem now that I'm beyond creating a half dozen primary pages. When I add a page, I give it a name under page ID. This will show up in the URL as domain.com/pageID. Correct?

Now how do I add a page so that the URL will reflect a structural hierarchy, such as domain.com/pageA/pageA1 ?

Am I overlooking something totally obvious?

-Bob

www dot domain/motorcyclechain.html correct

Why would you want to ? /motorcyclechain is google friendly, SEO friendly

www dot domain/page1 is not

Anyway you can change those id's add lib, and your links will all keep just go to pages tool, top of page, and replace the ID with watever you want.

And you also can chage the order the pages display in VSD incase you just want a structure to view

settings organise pages.

There's two ways to accomplish your need. Make two sites with VSD and use one to publish the upper tier and the second to publish the lower tier. The other way is to still make two sites in VSD but use the add files tool to add the second sites pages to the first sites directory structure.

Viv, I'm not referring to the particular name of the page, those were generic examples. What I'm getting at is that there is a huge difference between:

www.domain.com/motorcyclechain.html

and

www.domain.com/vehicles/motorcycles/dir … chain.html

See what I mean? One has a hierarchy and organization that is visible right within the URL. I can understand parent/child relationships of page content just by looking at the URL. Speaking of SEO, wouldn't Google want to see a clear content hierarchy within an URL, by the use of the slash? Otherwise, every single page in the site appears to be of equal importance. In the example above, www.domain.com/vehicles.html is clearly a more important page than www.domain.com/vehicles/motorcycles/dir … hain.html. Wouldn't Google like that to be knowledge to be present in the URL?

Eric, can you point me to any sort of examples or tutorials of exactly how to accomplish either of those methods? It sounds rather cumbersome, although as of yet I haven't published anything so it may be simpler than it is sounding. By either of these methods could I continue going with deeper and deeper tiers? Could I end up with a page URL like www.coffeecup.com/forums/designer/url-a … hierarchy/ ?

Could you describe this in a little more detail? I'm playing with the Add Files method. I see how to add folders and files under the root directory. In VSD I am going to Edit>Add Files. The root directory is shown. Is the correct method to add a subfolder under that, and then the entire VSD file (.vnu extension) of the second site into that new folder? Or should I be adding the individual .html files of each page from the second site?

How do I get a working link from the first site, to pages I've added? I've tried Link>Browse but it gives an error on preview. I tried this with both the .vnu file and the .html files in the subfolder. Do I first need to upload the files from the second site to the server and then do a Link>URL ?

You would be adding the actual html pages using the add files tool. You will either use html box's to link to those pages or use the link tool to link to those pages using an absolute reference. The html box methos could be relative. Of course you'll have to publish the site to preview using the absolute method as VSD will be trying to load a page on the actual server. If your using the two site two publishing method the links would need to be absolute and publishing would be a must for local preview links to work.

I believe that the SEO search structure comes from doing individual pg setting up of keywords, pg titles, pg descriptions, pg ID's. Instead of selecting this for all pgs select it for this pg only.
The search engine will look at the pg ID and the keywords and the pg title and the pg description and put it all together if it is well and properly constructed to give you a good search result.
I use the pg ID for the overall major heading of the specific pg. Then all other items expand upon that.
If you have congruent supporting corresponding pg section categories it does not matter that it is a subheading off of another pg. My interior garage floor epoxy pg is under or subheading of residential interior pg but it does not matter that the structure reflects that Just matters that the structure properly supports the pg ID garagefloorepoxypainting.html

Tried to edit this in on last entry but was told pg is not available

OH yes, must consider the pg content too and all of the individual pg images alternate text. I can make the same images on different pgs to have different alternate text to reflect the pg ID of the individual pgs.

Eric, thank you very much, this is quite helpful. Getting this to function will be my project over the next few days. Would you say there are any advantages or disadvantages between the two methods of linking (html box vs. link tool)? Would one be easier than the other to deal with when it comes time to edit the content on a second tier page?

GregB, Yes, I understand all of that. I was wondering if Google recognizes a difference between /garagefloorepoxypainting and /residentialinteriorpainting/garagefloorepoxypainting. If it were my site, I'd definitely want the page to be named the latter, just out of sheer principle of organizational hierarchy. There is an understanding, just by looking at the URL, that content on the page is a subcategory of content on another. Right now, when I am on your site, on the garage floor painting page, I have no idea that it falls under Residential Interior. If a Google search brought me directly to your garage floor painting page, I would have absolutely no way of knowing that there is higher level content (Residential Interior.) This is exactly what I'm looking to avoid.

So just as a human would instantly understand that relationship by looking at the URL, I'm wondering if Google does too. And if it matters in any way for SEO. I understand that Google will figure out all of the links between pages by crawling the site. But a link between a page named /A and one called /B is NOT the same as one between /A and /A/B. One is a horizontal movement, where the URL tells us they are of exactly equal weight within the overall site. The other is a vertical movement, where it is clearly understood that content on one page is child content of a parent page. The URL, through its use of slashes, is what is indicating hierarchy. I'd find it very hard to believe that Google doesn't care about this.

There's actually one other method and that assumes you use an outside ftp program to upload the second site to the proper directories. With this method you would use absolute links to be able to have local preview on the first site.
As far as which method to use it all depends on what you think you can keep straight and probably how large of a site your looking to make. I actually use a mixture of all three.
If you think your ever going to mess with altering html code then I would use the third method and use CC's HTML editor as your ftp source because it's great for making html and ftping the files to the server.