Does URL format affect Keyword effectiveness for a URL?

[SL_SEM]

I am looking at our site structure, and don't want to have to rebuild the way the site was linked together based on it's current folder structure so I am wondering what option would work better for our URL structure.

I will uses car categories as an example of what I am talking about, but you can insert any category structure you like.

For example I would like to have pages like this:

www.example.com/ford-convertibles
www.example.com/chevy-convertibles

But instead due to the site structure I will need to have pages like this:

www.example.com/ford/convertibles
www.example.com/chevy/convertibles

But wonder if I shouldn't do the following to ensure the proper phrase is known for the page:

www.example.com/ford/ford-convertibles
www.example.com/chevy/chevy-convertibles

The "/ford/ford-convertibles" just seems odd to me as a human, but I haven't seen anything on how well a keyphrase in a URL split by /'s does and I know dashes for phrases are fine. This means I am inclined to go with the"/ford/ford-convertibles"style because it keeps the keyphrase separated by dashes even if it is a bit repetitive.

There will be other pages too like "/ford/top-10-fords-ever" but I don't wonder about that since it isnt "ford/ford-xxxxx"

Thoughts on whether /'s in a keyphrase are as good as dashes?

[RyanKent]

Thoughts on whether /'s in a keyphrase are as good as dashes?

For readability and appearance I prefer the second set of examples you shared:

www.example.com/ford/convertibles
www.example.com/chevy/convertibles

It makes no difference to Google whether you use a slash or hyphen as a word separator.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=971qGsTPs8M

The saddest part of me sharing this link is I knew before I went looking for it Matt was wearing a light green polo shirt in the video.

[SL_SEM]

Nice video link! Thanks for the info as this is now.... ANSWERED