Siloing/Site Structure Dilemma

[sccats]

I'm working on determining the site structure of a new Wordpress site I'm working on.

In an attempt to build a silo, I have it set up like this:

Homepage
-- Topic 1 Page
--- Articles
-- Topic 2 Page
--- Articles

My problem is that the primary keyword I'm targeting with "Topic 1" is 4 words long, making articles created about Topic 1 have a URL that looks like this: domain.com/four-word-key-word/sub-article. Pretty long.

I believe my options are:

1. Change the URL of Topic 1 Page to a single-word/remove the primary keyword from the URL to shorten future article links.
2. Change the sub-article URLs to NOT include /topic-1-page-name/, so they would just be domain.com/topic-1-sub-article.

What is better way to go here? Does it really matter? Am I missing another option?

 

[davidfowler]

Url lengths dont matter and having your parent keyword in url is part of siloing.

 

[kboxer7]

If you insist, would rather have the parent (primary) keyword in the URL and shorten the sub-topic keywords to make it shorter...However, length will not have an impact other than the URL being truncated in the SERPS to around 79 characters give or take.

btw, siloing isn't what it used to be in terms of SEO. Though it is beneficial in other aspects (such as site crawing and making link modeling easier).

 

[sccats]

I would rather have the parent (primary) keyword in the URL and shorten the sub-topic keywords to make it shorter...

btw, siloing isn't what it used to be in terms of SEO. Though it is beneficial in other aspects (such as site crawing and making link modeling easier).

Do you think having URL structure setup as /category/post makes more than a marginal SEO impact over /post/? e.g:

Homepage
- Topic 1 (/primary-4-word-keyword/)
-- Topic 1 Sub-Article (/article-title/)

vs.

Homepage
- Topic 1 (/primary-4-word-keyword/)
-- Topic 1 Sub-Article (/primary-4-word-keyword/sub-article-title/)

I think I'd rather have the latter for usability sake, but still keep the vertical link structure intact.

 

[kboxer7]

Do you think having URL structure setup as /category/post makes more than a marginal SEO impact over /post/? e.g:

Homepage
- Topic 1 (/primary-4-word-keyword/)
-- Topic 1 Sub-Article (/article-title/)

vs.

Homepage
- Topic 1 (/primary-4-word-keyword/)
-- Topic 1 Sub-Article (/primary-4-word-keyword/sub-article-title/)

I think I'd rather have the latter for usability sake, but still keep the vertical link structure intact.

URL length will not have an impact other than the URL being truncated in the SERPS to around 79 characters give or take (which potentially could lower CTRs a bit). If there are any "stop-words" in that URL (i.e. to, the, is, etc) then you could remove those as Google ignores them anyway as it pertains to SEO in URLs.