Page URL Hiearchy

[bThere]

So I have read on here that page URL Hiearchy is important. My question is from a search engine standpoint which of the following methods would be the best to use (or another if not listed)

COMPACT and naturally hierarchical

MountainBiking.com

MountainBiking.com/adventures ( a list of the pages below )

MountainBiking.com/adventures/in whistler (for each page)

MountainBiking.com/adventures/in utah

OR VERBOSE but reptetive

MountainBiking.com

MountainBiking.com/Mountain Biking adventures ( intro + a list of the pages below )

MountainBiking.com/Mountain Biking Adventures/Mounting Biking adventures in whistler

MountainBiking.com/Mountain Biking Adventures/Mountain Biking Adventures in Utah

It seemed like the blog I read suggested the compact form, but it seems to me that the verbose (though admittedly a bit clunky) seems better so far as exact keyword match etc.

Experience and or advice on this?

[augustos]

My opinion: mountainbiking.com/adventures/mountain-biking-adventures-in-utah/ Why like this? Because when you put less than 3 or more than 5 words in the URL google gives less importance for the keywords in the URL based in what mattcutts said. And for user point of view, If I see a sub-folder with MOUNTAIN BIKING too( assume the domain already have the keywords ) will look spammy for me.

[bThere]

The only problem with that  would be that all of the links would have to be on the home page, which I don't want.

I have a landing page, then a couple of searchable content categories/catalogs, similar to a blog structure ( excerpts to the full page )

Personally I like the flat structure better, but worry about losing out on points for not having an exact enough URL

[bThere]

I was going to add - between the words, is there a reason that more compact form (no - ) is better?

So the part that looks like it's phishing is the repetition of mountain bike adventures in the catalog section?

My thought was, and perhaps incorrectly that if someone searched for "Mountain Bike Adventures" then they would get the catalog page, but if something more specific the expanded page.

So to clarify you think that MountainBiking.com/adventures if all else on the page was optimized would work better than MountainBiking.com/Mountain Biking adventures/

Thanks for the help, really appreciate it.

[AmericanOutlets]

I've read that a flat URL structure is best -

"MountainBiking.com/Mountain Biking Adventures In Whistler" instead of "MountainBiking.com/Mountain Biking Adventures/Mountain Biking Adventures In Whistler".

This format is easier for bots to crawl. Since only around 130 characters of the URL show in SERPs anyway, searchers won't see the whole URL if it's too long. You also avoid the appearance of "keyword stuffing"  by using a flat URL structure.

[Malarowski]

The second format looks blatantly like SEO-'phishing' and I would not go to a website like that. Having the spaces in there could also cause some serious issues. You can always have the final destination being verbose:

MountainBiking.com/adventures/mountainbikingadventuresinwhistler

Although this looks crappy again. I think just having all these in your domain will be enough, so go with the clean, compact format, for your visitor's sake.