I'm rebuilding a site from scratch and would like to make better informed decisions about UX and IA.
Is it bad to use information architecture to describe multiple topics with duplicate catagory names ?
I want to keep a strong IA for a URL that users and SEO can depend on, but this is giving me a UX headache.
A website about a journey through indigenous games culture attempts to structure content by location with each of these pages displaying a contextual route map with links to content below the map.
route
-africa
--morocco
---games
----dinifri (*a)
---videos
---photos
---sketches
---travelog
route/africa/morocco/games/dinifri
The same website attempts to present information under the topic of "games" where each catagory page will highlight game content only, and not the route map.
games
-africa
--morocco
---dinifri (*b)
----videos
----photos
----sketches
games/africa/morocco/dinifri
And another obvious topic is for "videos" where each catagory page only shows videos:
videos
-africa
--morocco
---games
----dinifri (*c)
---vlog
----yyyymmdd
videos/africa/morocco/games/dinifri
My first assumption is that it is bad to duplicate the specific content and so at least (*a) should simply become a link to (*b) or perhaps vs versa.
But what about the duplication of continent and country catagory pages? Whilst games/africa will show only games content and route/africa will show a map of africa with general content below the map. Isn't this duplication of "africa" category name bad UX ?
The alrternative might be to use tags and search based menus, but I fear this dillutes the strength in a dependable URL hierarchy. Perhaps there are other ways overcome this burdensome structure.