We are creating a national real estate website which will contain 2mil+ listings. Our aim is to compete with the National leaders in the field. We are trying to lock down a url structure and it basically comes down to if we should put a major keyword in the url structure or not. The structure would have regional keywords naturally. Its the addition of a more descriptive key word which is in question. Our domain name has no keywords in it.
For the sake of this example, we would be targeting "city real estate"...
oursite.com/real-estate/state/city/ or
oursite.com/state/city/
Here is what the big sites use as an example:
http://www.zillow.com/homes/for_sale/New-York-NY/
http://www.trulia.com/NY/New_York/
http://www.trulia.com/real_estate/New_York-New_York/
http://www.realtor.com/realestateandhomes-search/New-York
Id love to not have to throw keywords in there and be as clean as possible but i also dont want to shoot myself in the foot. The big boys do add additional keywords in the url, does that mean we should? Id much rather be a leader than a follower but again, I dont want to mess this up from the start and these guys have probably tested this (or have they?).
Input would be greatly appreciated.