Is this spamming keywords into a url?

[Sika22]

My company has previously added on extensions to a url like the example below

http://www.test.com/product-name/extra-keywords

My question is since there is no difference between the pages

http://www.test.com/product-name and http://www.test.com/product-name/extra-keywords and you don't leave the product page to reach the extra-keyword page is this really necessary?  I feel like this is probably not a best practice.  Thanks for any suggestions.

[tdawson09]

It is going to be spamming your URL's with keywords that are not serving a subfolder purpose. I would focus on naturally putting your keywords into your product name in the title tag, URL and H1 tag.

[Sika22]

Thank you.  This is what I was thinking but wanted to confirm my thoughts.

[tdawson09]

Google is getting pretty good at sniffing out webmasters trying to game the system. Just naturally put your keywords in places that make sense and try not to overdo it, and you should be fine.

[Sika22]

That's the plan.  Our site has not been updated since 2011 so I'm trying to point out these issues and tackle them one at a time.  We are also double indexed with www and non and about to launch a new site that we will be redirecting to.  Lots of work ahead

[billhartzer]

Sika22

Typically, when you come up with a URL structure, that URL structure should closely resemble the breadcrumb trail of your site. So, if you have something like www.domain.com/category/product1 then you should be able to go to www.domain.com/category/ and get a list of products.

It looks like the URL structure you're talking about is adding extra keywords, and that's not necessary.

[Sika22]

do you know where I can find data showing this?  will it actually hurt rankings?  I'm thinking it's going to make duplicate content.

[Sika22]

Hey guys thanks again for the help but I am still looking for some data to prove this point.  I have gone ahead and determined that the keywords we are currently using are placing us page 4 and below while our title tags are placing us higher.  If there are any other articles are hard facts on how this doesn't help in this scenario it would be greatly appreciate.