Yet Another, Yet Important URL structure query.

[TheCraig]

Massive changes to our stock media site and structure here.

While we have an extensive category system previously our category pages have only been our search pages with ID numbers for

sorting categories.  Now we have individual category pages.

We have about 600 categories with about 4 max tiers.

We have about 1,000,000 total products and issues with products appearing to be duplicate.

Our current URL structure for producta looks like this:

http://example.com/main-category/12345/product-name.htm

Here is how I was planning on doing the new structure:

Cat tier 1:

http://example.com/category-one/

Cat tier 2:

http://example.com/category-one/category-two/

Cat tier 3:

http://example.com/category-one-category-two/category-three

Cat tier 4:

http://example.com/category-one-category-two-category-three/category-four/

Product:

http://example.com/category-one-category-two-category-three/product-name-12345.htm

Thoughts?

Thanks!

Craig

[DirkC]

Hi Craig,

If the keyword appears twice in the url it should be acceptable. What I normally do is to look at the url & judge if it still looks "natural" (with "natural" off course is quite subjective). If it looks stuffed, I change, if not I keep it. Check the 'stuffed' examples here: http://blogs.bing.com/webmaster/2014/09/09/url-keyword-stuffing-spam-filtering/

Sorry I cannot be more specific, it's a bit of a grey area.

Dirk

[TheCraig]

Hey Dirk,

Thanks again for the great insight here.

I have a follow-up however...

On our current product pages pre-URL change, the URL structure looks like this:

Let's say, for example purposes, that two of our very top keywords are "Calico Cats" and "Calico Kittens."

example.com/Calico-Cats-Kittens/12345/Tiny-Cat-Playing.html

Before this site re-mod we didn't have any actual category pages, the categories just linked to our search results pages as talked about previously.

The new category pages would look like this:

example.com/Calico-Cats/Calico-Kittens/Sub-Category-One/Sub-Category-Two

So, my question is first for the category page:

Which is better:
example.com/Calico-Cats/Calico-Kittens/Sub-Category-One/Sub-Category-Two/ 
example.com/Calico-Cats/Kittens/Sub-Category-One/Sub-Category-Two/

Is there any concern here with Repeating the word "Calico?"

And for the product page:

example.com/Calico-Cats/Tiny-Cat-Playing-12345.html
(Excluding the "Calico-Kittens" category level to decrease the number of folders and also, because of the concern that including "Calico" twice may be an issue?
OR

example.com/Calico-Cats/Calico-Kittens/Tiny-Cats-Playing-12345.html
(including an extra category layer, but only because "Calico-Kittens" is one of our top, most valuable keywords)

There will be hundreds of thousands of product pages like this.

Thanks again for your help!
Craig

example.com/Calico-Cats/Calico-Kittens/Sub-Category-One/Sub-Category-Two

[DirkC]

Hi Craig,

Personally I would prefer folders because it's easier for reporting purposes

Cat tier 1:
http://example.com/category-one/

Cat tier 2:
http://example.com/category-one/category-two/

Cat tier 3:
http://example.com/category-one/category-two/category-three

Cat tier 4:
http://example.com/category-one/category-two/category-three/category-four/

It seems to go against the rule of a flat site structure, but in fact for that, it's more the number of links to the category that counts rather than the number of folders.
For the product url I wouldn't use all these folders. If one product belongs two multiple categories / subcategories you'll end up with duplicate urls - here I would rather go for

http://example.com/xxx/product-name-12345.htm. xxx could stand for the main category (if each product belongs to only one main category) or something generic like "products"

Some additional info can be found here: http://www.bruceclay.com/blog/structured-urls/

Hope this helps,

Dirk