One Folder or No folder? what is the best for Seo?

Hello SEO friends,
Is fewer folders better for SEO?
Or say as an example:
example.com/merchant/nike
Or
example.com/nike
the goal being of course to position yourself well on nike (it's just an example)

the shorter the better?
(I know that the notion of depth is also important)
or the fact that I sort my site by merchant/site is a good indicator for our friend google?
I can't find any sources that settle this question.
Thank you in advance for your help and kindness.

 

I can say that having fewer folders in your website URL structure does not necessarily guarantee better SEO performance. While it is true that shorter URLs can be easier to read and remember for users, the impact on SEO is not significant.

The most important factor for SEO is to have a clear and logical URL structure that accurately reflects the content of your website. If organizing your site by merchant/site makes sense for your business and helps users navigate your site, then it can be a good indicator for Google as well.

Just my 2cents

 

at least you can check both ways and see what is better in your situation .

 

There have been many tests done that concludes shorter url's rank better. One of the most common issues I see is people leaving the default /category/ in their url when it's unnecessary. See attachment for example where "mens" is the category, so there's no need for a generic /category/ string in the url.

With that said, site navigation is also very important and can make a difference in UX. Ecommerce sites have more issues with this than most.