Best Format for URLs on large Ecommerce Site?

[eTundra]

I saw this article, http://www.distilled.net/blog/seo/common-ecommerce-technical-seo-problems/, and noticed that Geoff mentioned that product URLs format should be in one of the following ways:

• Product Page: site.com/product-name
• Product Page: site.com/category/sub-category/product-name

However, for SEO, is there a preferred way?

I understand that the top one may be better to prevent duplicate page issues, but I would imagine that the bottom would be better for conversion (maybe the user backtracks to site.com/category/sub-category/ to see other products that he may be interested in).

Also, I'd imagine that the top URL would not be a great way to distribute link juice since everything would be attached to the root, right?

[eTundra]

Just to elaborate on the size of the site, we sell about 150,000 products, and many of them can be accessed through multiple categories. Thanks for the responses!

[LukaB]

Depends on the amount of products, but you say it's a "Big" e-commerce website, then I would suggest going for the 2nd one, more organized.

If you take a look at any ecommerce website, Ebay, Amazon, etc, none have short times.

I suggest going for the 2nd one if your shop is going to be larger.

[danatanseo]

Hi Kasy,

IMHO the second one is better for a large ecommerce site. The first one is fine for a smaller site. For SEO purposes , I think either way is fine, although shorter URLs are generally better (especially for your visitors). The only reason I recommend using the second choice for your situation is that it will make it much easier for you to manage content and any possible future 301 redirects in the event that you ever change platforms. Imagine if thousands and thousands of products are all visually in one directory. Yuck. Sorting that out during a replatform would be a real headache!

I'm interested to know what others have to say. That blog post at Distilled that you mentioned is one of my favorites. Good luck,

Dana