Categories, Single and Channels ....SEO Background... I took a look at this post answered by @Damon

My objective is similar.  I have a channel for news.  Each entry in news is assigned various categories (e.g. product category).  

I do not have a "single" in Craft for each product category.  However, I do have a _productCategory.html template.  And each product category has its own page. ...that is, productCategory/{slug} with {slug} being an individual product category.   And I have a link to each product category in my nav.   I know, pretty basic.  

I know there are multiple ways to skin the cat, but am I missing out on anything by not using a single for each product category page?  Is there any impact on SEO?
Here's some things to consider with SEO and URLs:

Readability of the url
Including keywords in the url
Shorter > longer
Fewer /folders/ in the url
Generally don't want any caps in the URL
Separate words with hyphens or underscores

So, "/particular-product-title" would be preferable to "/productCategory/particular-product"

Hope that's helpful!