Client was scared to restructure URLs for siloing. Months of redirect risk for nothing. The actual signal of a silo is the internal link path, and breadcrumbs carry most of it.
What I did instead of touching URLs:
— Added BreadcrumbList schema linking child to parent to category
— Made the visible breadcrumb a real crawlable link path
— Added a 'parent category' link block at the top of every product
Google reads the breadcrumb trail as the hierarchy. You can have flat URLs and a deep logical silo at the same time.
One caveat: the breadcrumb has to be in the HTML, not painted in by JavaScript after load. Check the raw source.
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Your silo lives in breadcrumbs, not the URL
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