Breadcrumb wording and keywords

[khi5]

This is real estate website related. For every neighborhood I have a "condos" and "houses" page. In the breadcrumb structure I may have: "home > island condos > city condos > region condos > neighborhood condos". Questions:

1. Some breadrumb structures have 5-6 different breadcrumb link and repeating the word "condos" in each link seems redundant. Would it be better just to list "island", "city", "region", "neighborhood" and never use the word "condos" or "houses" in the breadcrumbs? For users this would be better.

2. If I implement what I suggest in 1) - deleting "condos" or "houses" wording from breadcrumb links, then on a condos page the word "region" (as an example) will lead to the "region condos" page whereas the exact same word "region" on a house page will lead to the "region houses" page. This means I will have a situation where the anchor text in breadcrumbs become 100% identical for my "condos" and "houses" pages, however, the they lead to different pages. Is this OK? I have in past been told that when I use internal anchor text, that the link should always leads to the same page. Having same anchor leading to different pages would not be good….is that so?

thank you

[khi5]

Hi Lee, In my 2nd message I included these URL's:
Hahaione condos pages: http://www.honoluluhi5.com/oahu/honolulu/hawaii-kai/hahaione-condos/
Hahaione houses page: http://www.honoluluhi5.com/oahu/honolulu/hawaii-kai/hahaione-homes/

Obviously, 2 different URL's. Do you have any evidence or detailed blog posts showing that using same wording in breadcrumbs or inter-linking in general to different URL's is OK, as long as the URL and / or H1 clearly shows what the page is about?

Again, my concern comes from the fact that I have been sold if I interlink with the anchor "Example" then I need to make sure "Example" always points to the same landing page, as search engine's otherwise will be left confused. I somehow think this line of thought is outdated, but any evidence or insight to clarify would be helpful

[Lee_Thomas]

No, you do not need to use the word 'condos' in each breadcrumb but it is necessary once in the highest sub-folder possible to prevent duplicate URLs.

Having it as your H1 will indeed be enough for search engines to recognise that for what the page is about, however you will get an extra ranking boost for it appearing in the URL also.

If you leave 'condos' or 'homes' out of your URL all together then you will end up with duplicate URLs as they will both be something like this for both homes and condos:

http://www.honoluluhi5.com/oahu/honolulu/hawaii-kai/hahaione/

This will break the functionality of your site and you won't rank, of course. The reason I use this example:

http://www.honoluluhi5.com/oahu-condos/honolulu/hawaii-kai/hahaione/

is because it incorporates 'condos' into the URL whilst keeping the URL as short as possible and using your keyword as close to the top level, which is the most optimized way of doing it for your keywords (Condos in 'location').

Nice, tidy, short and clear URLs that explain what the page is, whilst hitting your keywords are the goal

I currently have two real estate clients with this format for example: www.domain.com/new-homes/location/property/. This usually results in higher ranking for 'new homes in 'location''

If you don't think it works for you that is fine, it isn't a huge deal providing you are succeeding with other ranking factors, but it has had proven success for me in the past.

[khi5]

HI Lee, In my opinion changing the URL to include the word "condos" in top level is close to not important. H1 keywords should be much more relevant. 
You are saying: Unless top level in URL have the word "condos" in it, then I need to use the word "condos" for the anchor of each breadcrumb, is that what you are saying?

In other words, having the word "condos" in top level of URL makes search engines understand it is a condos page and that is why. I am saying, wouldn't search engines based on my H1 which always has the word "condos" perfectly understand this is a condos page and that is reason why using same anchor for breadcrumbs for condos page and houses page is perfectly fine?

[Lee_Thomas]

Oh I see.

If you are keeping the URL structure the same then it would have to be in a different format. As you only have 2 top level folders (Oahu and Honolulu) you could do it like this:

http://www.honoluluhi5.com/oahu-condos/honolulu/hawaii-kai/hahaione/

http://www.honoluluhi5.com/oahu-homes/honolulu/hawaii-kai/hahaione/

You can change all other anchors to 1 word, providing you have different top level anchors such as the example above.

Sorry for the misunderstanding!

[khi5]

I do not worry about URL strucuture, my question relates to anchor text in breadcrumbs.

1. should each breadcrumb link be "oahu home" "Honolulu homes" etc etc and for condos "oahu condos" "Honolulu condos" etc etc..OR

2. Should I use just 1 word "oahu" for both the houses pages and the condos page? In which case anchor text becomes identical....

[Lee_Thomas]

At the moment it looks like the word condos is necessary as it is only in there once. However the higher up your hierarchy the keyword 'condos' is, the more importance it will have.

I would have it like this:

http://www.honoluluhi5.com/condos/oahu/honolulu/hawaii-kai/hahaione/

http://www.honoluluhi5.com/homes/oahu/honolulu/hawaii-kai/hahaione/

Search engines would still interpret that these pages were about condos in honolulu etc. because that is the subfolder that they are in.

Search robots read left to right, start to finish just like us, so the higher up your URL structure your target keyword is the better.

Hope this helps.

[khi5]

Thank you for the details. Let me give an example and if you could let me know what anchor you'd put in the breadcrumbs that would be great:

Hahaione condos pages:

http://www.honoluluhi5.com/oahu/honolulu/hawaii-kai/hahaione-condos/

Hahaione houses page: http://www.honoluluhi5.com/oahu/honolulu/hawaii-kai/hahaione-homes/

Thank you

[Lee_Thomas]

I think you would be correct to take the word condos out of all of your lower level pages, Providing your top level page has 'condos'. The shorter the URL the better and having condos repeated when a search bot would know it has gone into the condos category already would not add any value.

Having the same URL structure after your top level page is fine as it is within a different category. If it is the exact same page however, make sure your canonicals are correct and functional.

There are many ways you can use internal anchor text. I do agree that you shouldn't have the same anchor text pointing to different pages when you are linking from the main body text, but in a navigation menu it is fine. If I had my choice based on the structure above I might do it something like Home > Condos > Island > City > Region > Neighbourhood. That is purely at matter of preference as it would allow for a good cornerstone top level Condos page to rank well and link to.