Are My URLs Being Diluted?

Find out about url dilution

[docbrown]

Which type of url should i use?

stresstopics.com/products/stress-relief-balls

stresstopics.com/stress-relief-balls


For both of these urls i'll be putting a link in the main top navigation bar called "products".
On this product page i'll be putting links to a number of products. But what i don't know is which of the above 2 type urls should i use?
The first one helps the search engines classisy all the products on the site into a "product" directory (i think)
But the problem is that i'm targeting the exact term "stress relief balls" and don't want to dilute the url by putting in an unneccessary word ie in this case the word "products"

Which is the best way to go? I had initially said i wouldn't use any directories to classify content categories but now i'm not so sure.

Which one should i use?

[piatkow]

Search engine algorithms are a moving target so any advice may be out of date in days or may stay valid for years. Indeed the rules could have changed and most people here may not even know.

As a general rule I don't think the path will loose you anything if the link is in the same place. The longer path may discourage type in traffic but may make your site easier to manage. You might derive benefit from the additional keywork in the longer path name.

[firstconversion]

One of jakob Nielsens usability guidelines is to always have the categories in there so that users can navigate by chopping off bits of the url - maybe not a big consideration, but i like to navigate that way myself

I do recall Goog says that it also crawls that way, by following the navigation path upwards to find new content

Altho for large sites that end up having multiple cat/cat/cat/product Ive seen domain/product work better than a very deep structure