Keywords in URL structure for Large Site

[cobbsfriedman]

We are creating a national real estate website which will contain 2mil+ listings. Our aim is to compete with the National leaders in the field. We are trying to lock down a url structure and it basically comes down to if we should put a major keyword in the url structure or not. The structure would have regional keywords naturally. Its the addition of a more descriptive key word which is in question. Our domain name has no keywords in it.

For the sake of this example, we would be targeting "city real estate"...

oursite.com/real-estate/state/city/ or

oursite.com/state/city/

Here is what the big sites use as an example:

http://www.zillow.com/homes/for_sale/New-York-NY/

http://www.trulia.com/NY/New_York/

http://www.trulia.com/real_estate/New_York-New_York/

http://www.realtor.com/realestateandhomes-search/New-York

Id love to not have to throw keywords in there and be as clean as possible but i also dont want to shoot myself in the foot. The big boys do add additional keywords in the url, does that mean we should? Id much rather be a leader than a follower but again, I dont want to mess this up from the start and these guys have probably tested this (or have they?).

Input would be greatly appreciated.

[DanSpeicher]

I'm having a hard time finding a quantifiable correlation for subfolders.

Jane Copeland said this back in 2009: "Keywords in folder names or file names are not nearly as effective as keywords in domain names, but they still play a part in optimisation."

http://www.seomoz.org/qa/view/24340/keyword-in-many-subfolders-away-from-root-domain

And URL length has a negative correlation (-.06).

http://www.seomoz.org/article/search-ranking-factors#metrics-8

Something like this would get the location in and still be short:

http://www.trulia.com/NY/New_York/

I don't think either way will affect you too much. I like things concise, but that is just a personal preference.

[DanSpeicher]

Thanks. I read it a while ago and mis-remembered it.

And it is from 2 years ago. But I doubt it would become more relevant with searches trending toward UX.

[cobbsfriedman]

I believe he was talking about the location of the keyword in relation to the domain, unless you were looking at something else.

"Keyword Location - The closer the targeted keyword(s) are to the domain name, the better. Thus, site.com/keyword outperforms site.com/folder/subfolder/keyword and is the most recommended method of optimization (though this is certainly not a massive rankings benefit)"

http://www.seomoz.org/blog/perfecting-keyword-targeting-on-page-optimization - this was from 2 years ago as well.

[DanSpeicher]

[Wrong Reference]