How to handle Url structure for parent/child data?

Question

We are implementing a new Url structure for our existing site (Urdb.org) and I'm struggling with Url mechanics and how it relates to SEO.

In our world, we deal with the parent entity: "record", i.e. world-records, e.g. "Largest Toothpick Beard" and "attempt", e.g. "George Gaspar, Feb 2009". There is only one page, but the various attempts are on different tabs within the page.

The choices for Url are:

1. urdb.org/WR/toothpick-beard#GeorgeGaspar1
2. urdb.org/WR/toothpick-beard/GeorgeGaspar1
3. urdb.org/WR/toothpick-beard?attempt=GeorgeGaspar1

I had been planning on going with choice 1, but the problem is that unless I'm mistaken the page has to load first, then dynamically switch to the attempt view that the user is requesting which would be awkward.

Choice #2 seems to work from a server-side POV, but I'm strongly inclined to reduce the number of unique Urls across the site.

The only reason I list #3 is that I know in Google Webmaster tools I can instruct them to ignore certain querystring values.

Help is appreciated!

Answer 1

The last thing you want to do for SEO is limit the amount of content (unless its all dupe). You'll find everywhere that content is king. More spiderablke content / better chance of ranking.

Anyways, i'd say the second suggestion for full on SEO friendlyness and if you don't want to be spidered you could use suggestion 3 and exclude the parameter attempt from search engines using robots.txt