Including spatial location in URL structure. Does subfolder number and keyword order actually matter?

[esarge]

The SEOMoz On-Page report for my site brings up one warning (among others) that I find interesting:

• Minimal Subfolders in the URL

My site deals with trails and courses for both races and general running. The structure for a trail is, for example:

/trails/Canada/British-Columbia/Greater-Vancouver-Regional-District/Baden--Powell-Trail/trail/2

The structure for courses is:

/course/28

In both cases, the id at the end is used for a database lookup.

I'm considering an URL structure that would be:

/trail/Baden-Powell-Trail/ca-bc-vancouver

This would use the country code (CA) and sub-country code (BC) along with the short name for the region.

This could be good because:

• it puts the main keyword first

• the URL is much shorter

• there are only 3 levels in the URL structure

However, there is evidence, from Google's Matt Cutts, that the keyword order and URL structure don't matter in that way: See this post: http://www.seomoz.org/q/all-page-files-in-root-or-to-use-directories

If Matt Cutts says they aren't so important then why are they listed in the SEOMoz On-Page Report?

I'd prefer to use /trail/ca-bc-vancouver/Baden-Powell-Trail.

I'll probably do a similar thing for courses.

Is this a good idea? Thoughts?

Many thanks, in advance, for your help.

Cheers,

Edward

watch?v=l_A1iRY6XTM watch?v=gRzMhlFZz9I

[esarge]

Thanks for your responses, Ryan and Alan.

Ryan's response included a comment about the number of clicks away from the home page. This makes me question my site architecture so I've asked a question about spatial location and site architecture.

[RyanKent]

Let me start off by sharing the description of the "Minimal Subfolders in the URL" metric from the On Page report:

The quantity of subfolders in a URL appears to correlate to rankings. URLs with fewer trailing slashes perform better than those with more. Additionally, search engine representatives have recommended that excessive, subfolders in a URL string may be a signal that the page is very deep in a site's structure and may be less valuable/worthwhile to crawl, index and rank.

Your On Page report, like many SEO tools, seeks to call your attention to possible issues on your site. There is a correlation to more folders being an increased number of clicks away from the home page. If that is a concern on your site, then the warning is valid. If that is not a concern, you can disregard the warning.

There are other reasons to shorten your URL structure other then rankings. Click Through Rate can be affected by URL appearance. It has been clearly shown users wish to know the URL of the page prior to clicking on the link. Your current URL cannot be seen completely in SERPs. I performed a search in Google.com for the URL path you shared, "/trails/Canada/British-Columbia/Greater-Vancouver-Regional-District/Baden--Powell-Trail/trail/2". Notice the result URL? It is cut off and you never get to see what is presumably the most important part.

Of your ideas, I like your preference the best as a URL structure, /trail/ca-bc-vancouver/Baden-Powell-Trail.

Whatever your decision, there is absolutely no need to stuff every keyword in the URL. mysite.com/baden-powell-trail works just fine. If the extra folders make sense for your users and site, by all means use them. I would advise against adding any keywords to a URL in a pure attempt to influence rankings.

[AlanMosley]

I seem to remeber Matt saying that it should not be too long, True its how many clicks from the home page, not how many folders deep. but the folder structure can not be endless.
As for order, I suggest it does matter, it does in every other on page piece of realeaste, having SEO Australia will rank you higher for SEO Australia then it would for Australia SEO.

Dont take every thing Matt Cutts says as the best advice for you, What he says is the best for google not SEO's. Sometimes you need to read between the lines, the second video is a good example, where he does not really say No, he states the question, does it have a Significant impact, he never claims it does not have an impact, and then adds he line about spending your time creating great content. I would take rtghe answer to that as a Yes it has an impact.
i dont think I have every heard matt say, Yes that works you do that and you will get good rankings. , the best you will get is an answer like the second video. He will advise you not to do things but rarly advise of a good idea to beat the search engines.