Welcome to the Q&A Forum

I am having difficulty evaluating pros and cons of various URL structures with respect to SEO benefits. So I can have the following

1. /for-sale-in-<city>-<someothertext>-<uniqueid>.php
So in this case a term like 'for sale in San Francisco' is directly part of the URL. </uniqueid></someothertext></city>

2. /for-sale/<city>/<someothertext>uniqueId
Here 'for sale in San Francisco' is not so direct in the URL, so I think. Also I 'heard' that forward slash URLs are somehow considered as being 'lower down' in the directory structure.  </someothertext></city>

3. /for-sale/<city>/<someothertext>/?pid=uniqueId</someothertext></city>

someOtherText contains keywords we are targeting.

1. Is there a preference of one format over the other?

2. Does it even matter?

3. someOtherText - does it makes sense to put keywords in the URL for just SEO purposes? I do not per se need someOtherText for functionality.

I am not able to convincingly decide between using redirects versus using 404 errors. People are giving varied opinions. Here are my cases

1. Coding errors - we put out a bad link

a. Some people are saying redirect to home page; the user at least has something to do PLUS more importantly it does NOT hurt your SEO ranking.

b. Counter - the page ain't there. Return 404

2. Product removed - link1 to product 1 was out there. We removed product1; so link1 is also gone. It is either lying in people's bookmarks, OR because of coding errors we left it hanging out at some places on our site.