Keyword location in Permalink structure for custom post types

[shawnbeaird]

I am in the process of a large rebuild and redesign of my real estate website. It is Wordpress based with custom post types organized by category archives for neighborhood pages. Through this process, I am expanding my content and number of internal pages by a large amount. I am at a decision point with permalink structure for my site and can choose two different directions to go, not sure which is best or if there is any impact on SEO for the two options. Most of it comes down to location of keyword search terms being placed in my permalink structures.

When I first built my site, exact domain match was still a thing for SEO power, and now days I hear it doesn’t hold much weight… so my domain name of http://dwellarizona.com still remains the same either way which does contain an important keyword, but might be redundant if using the keyword “Arizona” elsewhere in a permalink.

Is there any difference in SEO power for the following keywords whether they are placed all at the end of the permalink, versus being distributed more throughout the entire link address when there is a hierarchy to the address and some in the domain name, partly in a parent page address, and partly in the child page link address?

Target keywords: grayhawk, scottsdale, arizona
Option 1: http://dwellarizona.com/luxury/scottsdale/grayhawk vs
Option 2 (parent-child relationship): http://dwellarizona.com/luxury/grayhawk-scottsdale-arizona

[GastonRiera]

Hi Shawn,

Yes there is a difference in SEO. 
On one hand what you're proposing is somewhat called depth in the URL structure. So the more subdirectories, the more depth it is.
On the other hand, it is better, in my oppinion, to have the whole keyword in the same subdirectory. Something like: domain.com/category-1/some-keyword-long-tail is focused better in "some keyword long tail" than domain.com/category-1/some-keyword/long-tail

To sum up. Go with Option 2: http://dwellarizona.com/luxury/grayhawk-scottsdale-arizona

Best Luck.
Hope i've helped.
GR.

[shawnbeaird]

Another piece of info if relevant.  Each main category and sub category will have it's own page.

For example:

dwellarizona.com/luxury will be it's own page with applicable SEO focused on a large market segment, and have links to different cities of which Scottsdale is one. with links to:
dwellarizona.com/luxury/city-1
dwellarizona.com/luxury/city-2
dwellarizona.com/luxury/city-3

dwellarizona.com/luxury/scottsdale will be it's own page focused on the city of Scottsdale and luxury market, and have links to different neighborhoods of which grayhawk is one.

dwellarizona.com/luxury/scottsdale/neighborhood-1
dwellarizona.com/luxury/scottsdale/neighborhood-2
dwellarizona.com/luxury/scottsdale/neighborhood-3

dwellarizona.com/luxury/scottsdale/grayhawk is a neighborhood page.

[shawnbeaird]

I'm not sure I follow your response clearly...

[Christy-Correll]

Hi Gaston, did you see Shawn's responses to your responses? Just checking...

Christy

[GastonRiera]

Sorry for the late response. This week was a mess for me.

What I'm saying is that is advisable to have the whole keyword in the URL, without the subdirectory.
That's why, with the options you gave in the question, I'd go with option 2:

http://dwellarizona.com/luxury/grayhawk-scottsdale-arizona

Regarding the depth, is how many subdirectories attached are in your site. having more than 2/3 subdirectories is not something that Google's bot like. We know that everything that Google doesn't like isn't good for us.

Regarding the last response, you have several keywords, each one is a neighbourhood. In this case:

dwellarizona.com/luxury/scottsdale-neighborhood-1
dwellarizona.com/luxury/scottsdale-neighborhood-2
dwellarizona.com/luxury/scottsdale-neighborhood-3

I'd go for this configuration.
is it clear?

[GastonRiera]

LOL.

Sorry, I didn't have the time for a correct answer.