How is best to use Permalinks for Wordpress /category/postname or /postname
-
Hello ,
I have a question Regarding the Permalink structure form Wordpress ,I am trying to figure out what would be the best structure of the blog post link ,for the moment I am using the structure example.com/postname and I changed the structure to example.com/category/postname ,redirected with 301 the old links to the new links and I thought about it and wanted to ask ,
I would really appreciate if you could tell me what is best form SEO point of view to do.
Regards,
-
In the short-term, even using 301 redirects may have a slight negative effect on the weight of your links, but in the long-term, they shouldn't be affected by it really.
-
If it's a very tight niche with similar or related categories, Id just go with a post name. It's cleaner and easier to promote.
I go the category route if it's a different set of products/topics or ecommerce site.
Both works
-
The juice flowing to your posts from your frontpage will still be the same, but if you have post that have external links pointing to them you wanna make sure that you are using 301's to direct the traffic to the new path.
And just because your post urls are example.com/category/postname doesnt send them any less value then you link from you frontpage. The juice till not go to the category it would still go to the post. But the stucture is more clear to people and search engines
-
Thank you for your answer ,but for example i have posts looking like this example.com/postname and they have some weight connected to the home page,after i reconfigure the permalink into example.com/category/postname ,would i lose all the weight from the post ?and will transfer the weight of the post to the category ? right now the juice will go directly to the website example.com ,but after i introduce the category for every post the juice will go to the category and my website will get lower in juice,weight, like right now i have on homepage DA 25 and PA 36,But after this modification do you think will remain the same ? i doubt it
-
Thank you for your answer ,but for example i have posts looking like this example.com/postname and they have some weight connected to the home page,after i reconfigure the permalink into example.com/category/postname ,would i lose all the weight from the post ?and will transfer the weight of the post to the category ? right now the juice will go directly to the website example.com ,but after i introduce the category for every post the juice will go to the category and my website will get lower in juice,weight, like right now i have on homepage DA 25 and PA 36,But after this modification do you think will remain the same ? i doubt it
-
I have to Agree with Lumina and I would like to add:
When you are using a url string like this:
It makes it easier to track what categories that are doing best on your site in analytics or other tracking software you might be using. As well as it tells the user what topic the post is all about.
In My opinion the example.com/category/postname is the best practice and it also helps defining how you site is structured.
-
I would say that example.com/category/postname is the better way to go. It's good for SEO and, as an example. many popular (and even marketing-specific blogs like Hubspot) use categories before a post name in their URLs.
The only real downside is that the URLs themselves will be longer. Though, unless you expect posts to end up on SERPs. that shouldn't matter too much. Another thing to consider is: if some of your posts would fall under multiple categories, then you'll have to choose between them each time. Again, not a huge issue, but one to consider.
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Optimising meta tags: How to write them perfectly without duplicating? Impact of using different keywords?
Hi friends, Generally most of the articles about tags are either title rag or header tags, but not about both. I would like to know how to write perfect title and header tags. How much they must be relevant and different? Can we use the same tags for title and H1? If we are planning to rank for different keywords, can that different keywords can be used? I'm really curious to see some interesting answers for this. Thanks
Algorithm Updates | | vtmoz0 -
Category Containing a Product searched shows up higher in google then the product page itself?
Hello Moz Wizards, We have recently launched a new eCommerce website www.memoky.com and think we did a pretty good job with the markup structure for feeding the hungry google bot all information available about a the products. However google doesn't like us very much : ( It seems every time you google a product that we carry; the category pages that contain that product will show up, but the product page itself does not. Below are two examples, however this seems to be site-wide which makes me feel like there is an underlying issue that we are missing. Examples
Algorithm Updates | | Memoky
when searched for "Eduardo floor lamp - matt black/matt yellow shade"
Shows ups - http://www.memoky.com/lighting/floor-lamps.html
Does not - http://www.memoky.com/eduardo-floor-lamp-matt-black-matt-yellow-shade.html when searched for "Derrick arm chair - white leather/ walnut"
Shows ups - http://www.memoky.com/living/lounge-chairs.html_
Does not - http://www.memoky.com/derrick-arm-chair-white-leather.html_ that is the pattern for almost all the products on this site. Any thoughts on why this could be the case?0 -
Ecommerce SEO: Is it bad to link to product/category pages directly from content pages?
Hi ! In Moz' Whiteboard friday video Headline Writing and Title Tag SEO in a Clickbait World, Rand is talking about (among other things) best practices related to linking between search, clickbait and conversion pages. For a client of ours, a cosmetics and make-up retailer, we are planning to build content pages around related keywords, for example video, pictures and text about make-up and fashion in order to best target and capture search traffic related to make-up that is prevalent earlier in the costumer journey. Among other things, we plan to use these content pages to link directly to some of the products. For example a content piece about how to achieve full lashes will to link to particular mascaras and/or the mascara category) Things is, in the Whiteboard video Rand Says:
Algorithm Updates | | Inevo
_"..So your click-bait piece, a lot of times with click-bait pieces they're going to perform worse if you go over and try and link directly to your conversion page, because it looks like you're trying to sell people something. That's not what plays on Facebook, on Twitter, on social media in general. What plays is, "Hey, this is just entertainment, and I can just visit this piece and it's fun and funny and interesting." _ Does this mean linking directly to products pages (or category pages) from content pages is bad? Will Google think that, since we are also trying to sell something with the same piece of content, we do not deserve to rank that well on the content, and won't be considered that relevant for a search query where people are looking for make-up tips and make-up guides? Also.. is there any difference between linking from content to categories vs. products? ..I mean, a category page is not a conversion page the same way a products page is. Looking forward to your answers 🙂0 -
Proactively Use GWT Removal Tool?
I have a bunch of links on my site from sexualproblems.net (not a porn site, it's a legit doctor's site who I've talked to on the phone in America). The problem is his site got hacked and has tons of links on his homepage to other pages, and mine is one of them. I have asked him multiple times to take the link down, but his webmaster is his teenage son, who doesn't basically just doesn't feel like it. My question is, since I don't think they will take the link down, should I proactively remove it or just wait till I get a message from google? I'd rather not tell google I have spam links on my site, even if I am trying to get them removed. However, I have no idea if that's a legitimate fear or not. I could see the link being removed and everything continuing fine or I could see reporting the removal request as signaling a giant red flag for my site to be audited. Any advice? Ruben
Algorithm Updates | | KempRugeLawGroup0 -
Should we use brand name of product in URL
Hi all, What is best for SEO. We sell products online. Is it good to mention the brand in the product detail page URL key if (part of) the brand is also in the home url? So our URL is: www.brandXstore.com Is it best to do: www.brandXstore.com/brandX-productA.html of just do: www.brandXstore.com/ProductA.html Thanks for quick answering 😉
Algorithm Updates | | RetailClicks1 -
VRL Parameters Question - Exclude? or use a Canonical Tag?
I'm trying to figure something out, as I just finished my "new look" to an old website. It uses a custom built shopping cart, and the system worked pretty well until about a year when ranking went down. My primary traffic used to come from top level Brand pages. Each brand gets sorted by the shopping cart and a Parameter extension is added... So customers can click Page 1 , Page 2 , Page 3 etc. So for example : http://www.xyz.com/brand.html , http://www.xyz.com/brand.html?page=1 , http://www.xyz.com/brand.html?page=2 and so on... The page= is dynamic, therefore the page title, meta's, etc are the same, however the products displayed are different. I don't want to exclude the parameter page= completely, as the products are different on each page and obviously I would want the products to be indexed. However, at the same time my concern is that have these parameters might be causing some confusion an hence why I noticed a drop in google rankings. I also want to note - with my market, its not needed to break these pages up to target more specific keywords. Maybe using something like this would be the appropriate measure?
Algorithm Updates | | Southbay_Carnivorous_Plants0 -
What is the best way to organize a catergory for SEO purpsoes?
I work for a organic vitamin and supplement company and we are looking to rank for our categories by making more specific categories. For example we are going to try to add under the category "vitamin d" some smaller more relevant (longer-tail) categories like "spray vitamin d" and "vegan vitamin d" and try to rank instead for these searches and also searches containing words that we already have more authority from Google like "natural" or "organic". I know that putting the product pages a level deeper will only hurt us so I want to avoid that but I'm wondering if anyone has some advice on how to organize categories for longer tail keywords that we actually have a chance to rank for. Any help to figure this out would be greatly appreciated. Here is our page as it is currently, like I said we want to create sub categories that are effective for SEO, but also make searching and navigating the site easier. http://www.mynaturalmarket.com/Vitamin-D.html Thanks, ThatKwameGuy
Algorithm Updates | | ThatKwameGuy1 -
Does Google index Wordpress pages with frames
Does Google or other search engines index Wordpress pages that use frames? Here is the site in question: http://www.source-nutrition.com/son/
Algorithm Updates | | BradBorst0