I am working on an ecommerce site, I told our SEO consultant that I plan to make the URL scheme: /products/<id>/<name>. This is similar to Stackoverflow's URLs which are /questions/<id>/<title>.

He asked me if I could change the URL scheme to /p/<id>/<name> instead. I know why he wants this change, the word "products" isn't needed to find the correct product, and it doesn't offer any SEO, so shortening it to just p would make the relevant keywords in the <name> weigh more.

His main priority is maximizing SEO, but the part that I don't think he is considering is how this effects the semantics of the site. Also having the word "products" looks like it has meaning and a reason for being there, just having a p looks chaotic and ugly to me. I also don't think it makes that much of a difference does it? Stackoverflow doesn't use /q/<id>/<title> and they do just fine, I do realize that theres many factors at play here though, not just the URL.

So I want some outside opinions on which is the better way and why?