What is better for SEO keywords in folder or in filename - also dupe filename question

[irvingw]

Hey folks,

I've got a question regarding URL structure. What is best for SEO given that there will be millions of lawyer names and 4 pages per lawyer

www.lawyerz.com/office-locations/dr-al-pacino

www.lawyerz.com/phone-number/dr-al-pacino

www.lawyerz.com/reviews/dr-al-pacino

www.lawyerz.com/ratings/dr-al-pacino

OR

www.lawyerz.com/office-locations-dr-al-pacino

www.lawyerz.com/phone-number-dr-al-pacino

www.lawyerz.com/reviews-dr-al-pacino

www.lawyerz.com/ratings-dr-al-pacino

OR

www.lawyerz.com/dr-al-pacino/office-locations

www.lawyerz.com/dr-al-pacino/phone-number

www.lawyerz.com/dr-al-pacino/reviews

www.lawyerz.com/dr-al-pacino/ratings

Also, concerning duplicate file names:

In the first example there are 4 duplicate file names with the lawyers name. (would this cause Google to not index some)

In the second example there are all unique file names (would this look spammy to Google or the user)

In the third example there are millions of duplicate file names (if 1 million lawyers then 1 million files called "office-locations"  etc (could so many duplicate filenames cause ranking issues)

Should the lawyers name (which is the main keyword target) appear in the filename or in the folder - which is better for SEO in your opinion? Thanks for your input!

[crimzen]

I like all of the answers here and I would definitely focus on how the user is searching for the lawyers.  If you have a site with millions of lawyers, they would each have an area of practice so it would make sense to develop a structure around this first:

lawyerz.com/practice-area/state/city/attorney-name

WIth this structure, a searcher that types in "estate planning lawyer" would be sent to the estate planning lawyers page and allowed to search further for their city and then lawyer names.  I would attach the contact info, reviews directly on that lawyer's page.

Since your higher volume keywords are going be found within the "practice areas", this would seem the next step after the main domain target of "attorney" or "lawyers".  Then, location can come third, attorney name is most likely a lesser searched keyword but using a url structure such as "attorney-john-doe" reinforces.

I would LOVE to hear all the expert opinions about this as I am a newbie to seomoz but am finding some great experts and advice over here.

[AlanBleiweiss]

while pages with such file names can be indexed, the long-term view dictates avoiding pages with filenames in the URL due to future potential conversion to other frameworks.  It makes a site less than ideal for portability.

For example, if every page has index.php or whatever.asp and you change platform, you'll end up with every page needing a 301 redirect.  So it's better to avoid that whenever possible.

[itrogers]

Although the filename will be duplicate, the content on those filenames will be okay. Google will look more at the content on the page rather than anything else. There are sites out there that have weird file structures, like:

/index.php

/services/index.php

/products/index.php

Some CMS's will automatically do this, but they rank fine because they have quality content, even though the index.php is technically a duplicate filename.

You should be fine with this method.

[AlanBleiweiss]

It's about users for sure.  The last set you show communicates "lawyer name" is more important/valuable.  Which is the valid perspective, since all of those elements relate to that lawyer. If some users still want to find lawyers based on reviews, you can offer a filter for that in your database sorting.  Same with locations.

On the other side of the coin, instead of "locations", if you had town names, you could group by those so it would be /town-name/lawyer-name/   where all lawyers in the same town fall within that town-name grouping. If it's just /locations/ that's an invalid sort hierarchy.

[irvingw]

yes navigation-wise this definitely makes the most sense

www.lawyerz.com/dr-al-pacino/office-locations

i guess what I am mostly looking for an answer about is which is better for rankings, the keyword in the folder or file name and if duplicate file names will harm rankings.

thanks so much for your assistance guys.

[itrogers]

Ok gotcha- well if that is the case, then think about how the user will navigate to the end result if they started from the home page. Logically, you could assume the following

If URL structure is as follows:

www.lawyerz.com/office-locations/dr-al-pacino

then /office-locations/ should contain links to all office locations of multiple lawyers.

But with this structure

www.lawyerz.com/dr-al-pacino/office-locations

/dr-al-pacino/ should contain links to the 4 other pages. **This option will probably be your best structure. **

[goodlegaladvice]

If I am not mistaken it really depends on what users are searching

if they are only searching lawyers names than just find a structure that looks pretty and has the lawyer name in it.

But if there is any traffic data that points that people search the city or phone number along with the lawyer name than it might be wise to have that in the url structure

also ever thought of using subdomains? havent seen that in a lawyer directory yet but some of the major article sites switched to subdomains

[irvingw]

Assume there will be enough content on these pages to not get hit by panda.

The reason for doing this is to hopefully secure more than one first page result since these are names and very low competition, we see some sites doing this successfully.

We will have locations pages too which will list all the docs in that city

http://www.lawyerz.com/nevada/reno/personal-injury-lawyers

[itrogers]

Is there any particular reason why office location, phone number, reviews, and ratings need to be on 4 separate pages? I could see there being a lot of thin content which won't really rank well or provide a ton of user value. Can you give some more info as to why this would be? I could easily see all 4 of these pages combined into one.

With that, you can focus your URL structure into categories or local regions or both, depending on how dynamic you want the site to be. For example:

http://www.lawyerz.com/nevada/personal-injury/dr-al-pacino

OR

http://www.lawyerz.com/personal-injury/dr-al-pacino

OR

http://www.lawyerz.com/nevada/dr-al-pacino

Unless there is something that I missing, I think no matter how you structure your URLs, thin content just won't rank.