What is your opinion on ideal url structure?

[jessefriedman]

Which url structure do you think is better...

website.com/CO/denver/555-your-address-way-denver-co-55678/98347578

or

website.com/classifying-keyword/555_your_address_way-denver_colorado-55678-98347578

orrr

website.com/classifying-keyword/555-your-address-way-denver-colorado-55678-98347578

[Cyrus-Shepard]

Hi Jessi,

If I had to pick one of the 3 options, I'd chose the first, simply because it's the shortest.

1. In general, out of all ranking correlations we know of, longer URLs tend to rank slightly lower than shorter ones. It's not a hugely significant factor, but neither is keyword usage in the URL, as recent correlation data has also shown.

2. Many webmasters believe that URLs without numbers tend to receive a higher CTR than URLs with numbers. That's because our eyes tend to glaze over numbers, and they have an auto-generated look and feel to them. Personally, if numbers are necessary, I'd put them as close to the end as possible.

3. Along the same lines, there is some belief in the SEO world that a shorter directory structure (fewer folders and backslashes) tend to perform better in search, as this creates a virtual flat architecture for Google to crawl. That said, the benefit from this is most likely small in relation to other factors.

Just my 2 cents. Hope this helps!

[jessefriedman]

MIxed bag unfortunately but as I said, the big players use to have the #1 url structure and switched to the other....

http://zillow.com/homedetails/1949-19th-Ct-Jupiter-FL-33477/2118723028_zpid/

http://www.trulia.com/property/3087033383-1949-19th-Ct-Jupiter-FL-33477

http://www.realtor.com/realestateandhomes-detail/1949-19th-Ct_Jupiter_FL_33477_M57696-21478?source=web

http://www.movoto.com/real-estate/homes-for-sale/FL/Jupiter/1949-19th-Ct-435_R3288099.htm

http://www.homes.com/listing/167972690/1949_19th_Ct_JUPITER_FL_33477

[bronxpad]

Dashes / hyphens have been the preferred style for a while now. I'm not sure about them being separators or not, but as Zachary mentioned Matt Cutts from google mentioned dashes are best practice. What I would do is find the best sites in your industry and analyze what is working for them and not working. Dissect their site with the tools here on seomoz. A point of reference. Seomoz uses dashes not underscores.

[jessefriedman]

underscores is a consideration in our case because, for example you have an address like 2345 south blue jay way... we dont care about people searching for blue jays we only care about people searching for 2345 south blue jay way. Not saying its correct, just saying its the reason for consideration.

[jessefriedman]

Overall, the address is more of the keyword than the keyword i think in this case. And I think the keywords actual use as a organizational identifier is more important than the seo aspects on it, in our case at least as we would be targeting the address in general.

[deltasystems]

Not necessarily unproven.

The Google Webmaster Tools help article on URL structure still says to use dashes instead of underscores.

Matt Cutts' article from 2005 is dated, but also mentions to use dashes.

By definition an underscore is used to link words, and hyphens are used to join words or break them apart.

Why anyone would use underscores is beyond me, personally.

[jessefriedman]

.... additionally, I was asking because the major real estate portals use to do have the #1 url structure and have all recently switched to the latter. @joel, I have read that hyphens are like word separators where underscores will group words together.

[bronxpad]

Your address should be in the meta tags.

[bronxpad]

The third one is best. Keywords should be before address and hyphens look better the underscores. Also it's unproven but there are those who believe hyphens are better for seo than underscores.

[Delete2012]

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