Which URL structure is better?

[ChaseH]

Quick question - Have a real estate site focused on "apartments", but apartments in not part of my company name. That being said, should which of the following URL structures should I use?

http://website.com/city/neighborhood/property-name

OR

http://website.com/city-apartments/neighborhood/property-name

[Ray-pp]

You do want to have a good balance between keyword rich URLs and friendly URLs - shorter is more friendly.

I'm inclined to prefer the first choice. Usually apartment complexes have an 'apartments' in the name - e.g. Lakewood Apartments. You could keep that keyword to the property name itself and keep the more finely tuned structure of the first URL.

[max.favilli]

I totally agree with Ray.

Theoretically having the keyword to the leftmost position is better. But I prefer shorter.

If you have time and patience you can test it, use one structure for a group of urls, and the other for another group of urls and try to spot a possible influence.

[Toddfoster]

When it comes to urls, short and sweet always wins - Cover the technical and UX aspects and you won't go far wrong. There is an undeniable trend away from strictly technical SEO and towards UX-driven ranking factors. If your brand is memorable and relate-able, you will likely be better off moving forward than if  you focus on strict keyword-matching.

[ChaseH]

Thanks for your response. I'm going to add to this question..

Is there any advantage to not using all the sub-folders in your URL? For example, if I go with this link structure:

http://website.com/city/neighborhood/property-name

would it make any sense to potentially use this URL instead:

http://website.com/property-name

[ChaseH]

Thank you! Check out the additional question I just added below and let me know what you think.

[max.favilli]

As I said theoretically having the keyword you are after in the leftmost position is better. So if you already analyzed which keywords are the most relevant for you, you should try to place them in the leftmost position. If for example you are fighting a battle to improve your serp position for the query "property-name", you could decide to choose the second url in your example.

But, as others have already mentioned, serp positions are influenced by many many many factors, and focusing too much one technicality can mislead you and shift your focus from the general picture.

In general you should structure your content in folders, because google algo expect to find content structured that way, but it doesn't mean you have to in your specific case or for all your pages, or all your products, etc...

You should structure your url, after analyzing your content, the keywords you are after and your visitors behavior (and I would give a look at your competitors as well).

At the end you will have to make decisions between different possible url structures; you will have to take a risk making you best educated guess based on the analysis you have done, that's why I said the best thing you can do is "test".

I can't tell which structure is best for you, because it depends on that lengthy analysis you should perform, there's not an answer which fit them all.