I'm currently working out the best setup for URLs on an e-commerce site I'm working on.
The site sells games and as you may already know games can come with demos and multiple dlc packs. On the site a game, a demo and dlc all have their own individual pages.
I have designed the following urls... but can't figure out which one is better and whether potentially they might be too long.
Option One:
.../product/the-game-name/ // the full game
.../product/the-game-name/demo/ // the demo
.../product/the-game-name/dlc/name-of-dlc/ // the specific dlc
Option Two:
.../game/the-game-name/ // the full game
.../demo/the-game-name/ // the demo
.../dlc/the-game-name/name-of-dlc/ // the specific dlc
In both examples "..." is purely the domain name: i.e. http://mysite.com
If anyone can tell me the pros and cons of either option, or whether there are better alternatives that would be handy.
I've always been told that you want your key phrase rich URLs as close to the root as possible. To use hyperbole, domain.com/manufacturers/nintendo/products/super-mario-brothers is less effective than domain.com/super-mario-brothers or domain.com/nintendo/super-mario-brothers.
With the slashes, I assume you have IIS7. If you don't, you can download the Rewrite Module 2.0, and once installed, click it, then click add rule, there's a module right on the interface for taking care of trailing slashes throughout your solution.
After you've downloaded the Rewrite module, I would also recommend the Search Engine Optimization Toolkit that will offer suggestions as well. Some of the suggestions may be feeble, but some may be worth looking at. For instance, maybe you have your pageheaders styled a certain way but you don't have h1 tags, which SEs like.
Lastly, none of the rewrite modules mean anything if you don't get your hands dirty and go out there and make backlinks. Submit your sitemap.xml to google, your urllist.txt to yahoo/bing, and then backlink. Put your site in as many free directories as possible if they're relevant to your industry -- don't "link farm", though. Make a notepad file with a 30 or 40 word description with key phrases from your site, and just copy/paste 'em into backlinking directories. The most important backlinks are the ones that are pertinent to your product.