Site architecture for spatial location: Countries, states, regions: How deep should I go?

[esarge]

Hi,

Based on the answers to my question about how to put the spatial location in the URL I'm now thinking about whether and how to flatten my information architecture.

My main content is trails and courses. For both categories I have most content for Vancouver, BC (over 100 trails). I have some trails from California and more trails from other areas in BC (5-20 trails for 3 separate counties).

My current site architecture is:

trails -> country -> state/province -> county/regional district -> list of trails.

So a trail page is 5 clicks away from the root.

My course structure is:

courses -> course list

(I have far fewer courses but need to start structuring them)

I did a search for site:example.com and found that my course pages rank most highly (probably because I have more inbound links for them) then I get workout pages then I get trail pages last of all.

I want to be set up to scale for the rest of the world but I think I have to start winning in my local area first.

What ideas might be good for a better site architecture?

I'm thinking of doing this:

trails -> location page -> list of trails for county.

The location page would be a single page with a tree hierarchy from country to county - nicely styled to help the user. Something like:

Canada

-> British Columbia

-> -> Greater Vancouver

-> -> Okanagan-Similikameen

-> -> Squamish-Lilloet

United States

-> California

-> -> Marin

I would make the urls be /trail/ca-bc-greater-vancouver/baden-powell-trail.

I'm considering whether /trails/ca-bc/ (i.e. to get the state) should return a list of the counties. I'm worried about duplicate content for doing this.

Curiously, my competitors don't have this structure at all. Access to their trails is by searching.

Thoughts?

Many thanks in advance

[AlanMosley]

You are on the right track.
If you read this document you may get a better understanding, it has some outdated stuuf about in links not being able to hurt, you, but the stuf about page rank and links is invaluable knowlage.
http://www.webworkshop.net/pagerank.html