Let's say there are two site targeting the keyword "animal planet" both site are optimized properly and they both update everyday. With same density of back link. The only diffirence is their url, the first site use http://www.animal-planet.com to campaign for the said keyword and the second site use the following url http://www.mydomain.com/animal/animal-planet/ Now which of the two site will rank better?
Considering the fact that both sites / pages have the same PR and the same number of back links, the first option will rank better on search engines. The second page is 2 levels deep in the directory structure, so optimizing the home page of first domain will be easy to optimize and rank for the keyword "animal planet"
Cool... so the next question now is, Is there posible way that the (second url/site) 2nd level deep page over power the other one.
Yes it is possible. You must have better link popularity, BL's from high trusted sites with good anchor.
Domain is a couple of points towards it, but if you have a really really strong link background for the anchor text, it wont matter if the other domain has the name but with less backlinks
It really doesn't matter. Both can overpower one another with ease...the targeted keywords are in both domains. It's a backlink and PR battle, really, along with proper marketing.