SEO - link to long?

Homepage domain length matters big time. Catagory pages matter big time, need them short like mysite.com/keyword. Pages or Posts I don't see having any rules.. I duplicate the Page title in my links, and post title, and have been having incredible success with it. Doing www.mysite.com/keyword and having a different title just seems too over optimized, like it's artificial and not genuine too me.

Here's my outline.

Homepage: mysite.com
Category: mysite.com/lawn-mowers
Inner Pages: mysite.com/how-to-choose-a-fantastic-lawn-mower-and-get-the-most-for-your-money

Some of my categories aren't even keyword related.. Yet these inner pages rank #2-4 right under the brands official website or for the long tail phrase with very little link building. On a few test sites I've done this:

Homepage: mysite.com
Category: mysite.com/yard-work
Inner Pages: mysite.com/how-to-choose-a-fantastic-lawn-mower-and-get-the-most-for-your-money

Yard work doesn't have the lawn mover keyword yet it still ranks..

But not sure how you'd get around that... Maybe only do a portion of the keyword, followed up by the rest in the inner page?