Creating pages as exact match URL's - good or over-optimization indicator?

[lidush]

We all know that exact match domains are not getting the same results in the SERP's with the algo changes Google's been pushing through. Does anyone have any experience or know if that also applies to having an exact match URL page (not domain).

Example:
keyword: cars that start with A

Which way to go is better when creating your pages on a non-exact domain match site:

www.sample.com/cars-that-start-with-a/ that has "cars that start with A" as the

or

www.sample.com/starts-with-a/ again has "cars that start with A" as the

Keep in mind that you'll add more pages that start the exact same way as you want to cover all the letters in the alphabet. So:

www.sample.com/cars-that-start-with-a/
www.sample.com/cars-that-start-with-b/
www.sample.com/cars-that-start-with-C/

or

www.sample.com/starts-with-a/
www.sample.com/starts-with-b/
www.sample.com/starts-with-c/

Hope someone here at the MOZ community can help out. Thanks so much

[lidush]

Hi Curtis,

Thanks for your reply. Well to be more specific the domain would be:
freecarfinder.com/cars-that-start-with-a/

The domain is new so it has not authority whatsoever. The domain is not that long but it's not really short neither. The content on the page is pretty small where the exact keyword that's in the URL is mentioned in the heading 1 and twice on a small piece of text that explains how to use the page to search for results.

Totally agree best practise is to test it out. I do see that our competition is using /starts-with/a and is ranking really well with it. Maybe the best option is to create half of the pages using the exact keyword in the URL and half with /starts-with-a/ to see which one performs better?

[S_Curtis]

Unless your domain is really strong on car keywords I would include car in the URL, assuming the URL is not that long. Although Google is moving away from exact match into symantic search it seems to be happening slowly and we have certainly seen improvements in ranking by having some exact matches.  So I think as longs as you don't have the exact same phrase in all places on the page there isn't much danger. However, the best pratice is to test and learn, make the change and see if it improves the ranking.

Hope that helps, let me know if you need anything more?