Directory Structure

[mindflash]

Hi,

We are creating a new content directory for online courses hosted on our site. Like a typical directory, we have high level categories and then more granular subcategories. A course will typically only be in one high level category and then multiple subcategories. What would be the best URL structure for an individual course? Should we force users to pick one 'master' subcategory that gets included in their URL? Or should we just not include the subcategory at all in the URL? Right now we've been thinking about:

OurUrl.com/upper-category/sub-category/course-title

or

OurUrl.com/upper-category/course-title

[gfiorelli1]

Is a course going to be tagged as being about two or more kind of categories or just one? For instance, an SEO course could be put both as "Internet" and "Marketing".

if you reflect your is the same problem that some eCommerce have with products' classification, so the solution I suggest you is to do what in eCommerce is common to do in these case or to avoid these cases:

www.domain/course-title/

That way you avoid any possible duplication due to assigning a course to more than category and avoid potential links to both course's pages and - now that it is important - that the eventual social sharing and signals get split in two identical pages.