RULE: Default to /industries/<slug>/ for multi-vertical service business URLs. Never /for-audience/ as primary IA.

Rule: For Candid Creative multi-vertical service business clients, the default URL convention is /industries/<slug>/ (URL Pattern A). Variants like flat /<slug>/ (Pattern B) are acceptable for small sites that will never add other root-level taxonomies. Never use /for-<audience>/ slugs as primary IA — reserve those for paid-traffic landing pages only.

Why:

• Field survey of 8 multi-vertical service sites: zero used /for-<audience>/ for primary IA — it's a SaaS marketing convention, not a service-business one (see Field survey (May 2026): the /for-/ URL pattern was observed on ZERO of 8 multi-vertical service sites)
• Dominant pattern across Crowe (Crowe LLP: cleanest /industries// URL pattern in the sample (Audit/Tax/Advisory/Consulting × industries)), BDO (BDO USA: mirrors Crowe — /industries// pattern with separate /services/ namespace), HUB International (HUB International: parallel /industries/ + /products/ with industry sub-pages where complexity warrants) is /industries/<slug>/ — when two independent large firms converge on a URL convention, that's an industry-level signal
• Pattern A leaves room for sub-pages (/industries/agriculture/case-studies/); Pattern B fills the root namespace and constrains future taxonomies

How to apply:

• New sites: Pattern A by default. Pattern B only with explicit acknowledgement of the namespace constraint.
• Existing sites: don't migrate URLs solely for IA aesthetics. The [[sej-892-migrations-523-day-recovery]] cost is real. Migrate only when the existing pattern is actively harmful (e.g., /for-farmers/ conflict with a planned /farmers/ content category).
• /for-<audience>/ is fine for ad landing pages with noindex or low-priority sitemap weight — the lock-in critique applies to primary IA, not landing pages.