Advice on URL structure for competing against EMDs of a hot keyword

[warpsmith]

Here is the question, illustrated with an example:

A law client focuses on personal injury. Their domain is nondescript.

The question comes into the URL structure for an article section of the site (I think I know what most people here will say, but want to raise this anyway). This section will have several hundred 'personal injury' articles at launch, with 100+ added each month by writers. Most articles do not mention 'personal injury' in the titles or in the content, but focus on the many areas in which people can hurt themselves :-).

Spreading a single keyword emphasis across many pages/posts is considered poor form by many, but the counter-argument is that hundreds of articles, all with 'personal injury' in the URL, could increase the overall authority of the site for that term (and may compete more strongly with EMD competitors).

For instance, let's say Competitor A has this article:

www.acmepersonalinjury.com/articles/tips-if-in-car-accident

And we had the following options:

Option A: www.baddomain.com/articles/tips-if-in-car-accident

Option B: www.baddomain.com/personal-injury-articles/tips-if-in-car-accident

Of course, for the term "car accident", Option A seems on equal footing with the ACME competitor. But, what about the overall performance of the "personal injury" keyword (a HOT keyword in this space)? Would ACME always have an advantage (however slight) due to its domain? Would Option B help in this regard?

The downside of course is that this pushes "car accident" further down in the URL string, making all articles perhaps less competitive on their individual keywords.

[warpsmith]

yes, of course, and thank you again for the reply. In this case it is hundreds of lawyers and paralegals specializing in personal injury. This is just a very technical question on which structure (longer or shorter, Option A or B in the above example) would lead to any possible, even if minute, advantages.

[EGOL]

My URL structure would be based upon the composition of my potential content library....  and the composition of my content library would be determined by my expertise and the topics that I believe provide value to my business.

[warpsmith]

Thank you very much for the reply. The hundred articles is a bit misleading, most of this is user-generated content, although there are a few articles by paid writers (and not at $5/each, not those type of articles). The community is already very active, we are just relocating it.

And yes, URL keyword structure is a very minor thing in the overall scope of things - that being said, if one style is even slightly better then another style, certainly a one-minute WordPress permalink definition now for even a <1% gain is worth the time. Just curious, all things being equal, which URL structure  would seem to do better, even if very slightly.

[EGOL]

I think that you might be giving way way too much credit to the importance of keywords in a URL and the influence that a lot of pages might have in improving your rankings.

I think that URL keywords and pagecount are tiny tiny factors.

...This section will have several hundred 'personal injury' articles at launch, with 100+ added each month by writers.).

If you are launching a content development program based upon these assumptions you might be really wasting your money.   And when I hear you are going to be adding hundreds of articles per month I think that you are either paying an awful lot of money if you are buying quality or you are buying a lot of BS articles.

Rather than blather out a hundred BS articles a month, I would rather have three kickass articles per month that will be shared, emailed and linked to.  Depending upon the market you are attacking I might raise the number to something higher than three... but I use three to contrast quality with the quantity you propose.