Representing categories on my site

[MarkWill]

My site serves a consumer-focused industry that has about 15-20 well recognized categories, which act as a pretty obvious way to segment our content. Each category supports it's own page (with some useful content) and a series of articles relevant to that category. In short, the categories are pretty focal to what we do.

I am moving from DNN to WordPress as my CMS/blog. I am taking the opportunity to review and fix SEO-related issues as I migrate. One such area is my URL structure.

On my existing site (on DNN), I have the following types of pages for each topic:

/ <topic>- this is essentially the landing page for the topic and links to articles</topic>

/<topic>/articles/ <article-name>- topics have 3-15 articles with this URL structure</article-name></topic>

With WordPress, I am considering moving to articles being under the root. So, an article on (making this up) how to make a widget would be under /how-to-make-a-widget, instead of /<widgets>/article/how-to-make-a-widget I will be using WordPress categories to reflect the topics taxonomy, so I can flag my articles using standard WordPress concepts.</widgets>

Anyway, I'm trying to get my head around whether it makes sense to "flatten" my URL structure such that the URLs for each article no longer include the topic (the article page will link to the topic page though).

Thoughts?

[DonnaDuncan]

Note: I didn't understand your comment that tags should be mutually exclusive. If I have an article about saving money on flowers, why would I not tag that with both "budgeting" and "flowers"?

You absolutely would want to tag the article with both "money" and "flowers". Mutually exclusive means there should be no overlap in the meaning of two tags, in this example, "money" and "flowers". Clearly these two tags reference different topics. An example of undifferentiated or non-mutually exclusive tags would be "money" and "cash", or "flower". "flowers" and "flowering".

All articles belong to one and only one category, as implied by their URL structure. This creates some challenges because some articles may have some relevance to more than one category but I think I can live with this

You could actually replicate the article in more than one category, but you'd have to pick one as the primary and tag the other as canonical. Hopefully this would the exception as opposed to the rule.

Am I making sense?

Absolutely. Good plan.

[MarkWill]

This absolutely helps - a lot Thank you, Donna.

So, I am narrowing in on the following:

• Navigation (across the site) links to four or so "topic" pages, which are flagged as categories in WordPress. These would be something like "Planning", "Your Wedding Day", "Love and Marriage", etc. They are the "big buckets"

• I have tags like cakes, dresses, rings, guests, etc. Note: I didn't understand your comment that tags should be mutually exclusive. If I have an article about saving money on flowers, why would I not tag that with both "budgeting" and "flowers"?

• Articles

• All articles belong to one and only one category, as implied by their URL structure. This creates some challenges because some articles may have some relevance to more than one category but I think I can live with this

• URLs would be of the form <category>. So, for example \your-wedding-day\choosing-your-wedding-ring</category>

• I can flag articles with one or more tags

• For each of category

• The term I expose on the page (visually) will be "human friendly". What I mean by that is I will use a natural terminology that reads well and is NOT focused on SEO-specifically. So, the navigation menu might simply be "Planning" (as opposed to "Wedding Planning", given that the whole site is about wedding)

• The URL to the category page will be SEO-friendly (so, \wedding-planning, not just \planning)

• The category page will be SEO "aware" (decent title, keyword focused, etc) but also a darned good read for the visitors (quality of content being a factor in SEO anyway)

• The thinking here is that the URL relays the essence of the page for URL but I don't need to clutter the visual expression of this (what the visitor sees) by prepending "Wedding..." to everything.

Am I making sense?

Thank you again.

Mark

[DonnaDuncan]

Yes, your thinking is correct.

Don't rush it. (And I see you aren't.) Map out your information architecture carefully cause, as you know, it's difficult to change after-the-fact.

I'd use the big, broad terms as categories and the topics as tags (which should definitely be noindexed). Your categories seem to be related to where you are in the wedding process - engagement, wedding service, reception, honeymoon, follow-ups. Tags seem to be specific to products, vendors and services and tools e.g. hair, dress and makeup, photographers, officiants, and DJs, invitations, speeches, songs, and so on. Tags can span different stages in the process but are mutually exclusive.

I hate to share stuff I've written on Moz in case it gets interpreted as link planting, but in this case I really think this post might help (www.b-seenontop.com/seo-blog/how-to-pick-blog-categories-and-tags/). This one from WPBeginer is also quite good. (http://www.wpbeginner.com/beginners-guide/categories-vs-tags-seo-best-practices-which-one-is-better/).

Does that help? You're definitely on the right path.

[MarkWill]

Thank you, Donna. So, I've been doing some more thinking about this and it's a difficult balance. I have two ways to look at the whole issue.

• Through the aforementioned "big buckets", such as Planning, Looking Good, Your Wedding Day, etc. I see 4, maybe 5, of these.
• Through the "topics" (cakes, dresses, etc). We have quite a number of those.

The first one is best suited as the second tier ("folders" under the root) numerically - there are, say, 4 of them. However, they are pretty broad and I don't know how successful we'd be in what are very competitive SEO areas (wedding planning, for example, is right up there). Also, apart from the article/post lists (which would be featured in those pages), I am not sure how often they would change.

The second ones are more specific, but are numerically probably too broad for the second level. But the

So, still not sure how to structure this. But one thing I would like to clarify is that if I go with the former (big, broad areas) then having them as second-level entities is no worse, presumably, than just having /blog at the second level, right? It would seem to me that /blog has very little SEO value, whereas even something broad like /wedding-planning has at least some value, right?

Thanks.

Mark

[DonnaDuncan]

Hey Mark,

Yes, "flat" IS confusing. I'm very concrete. When I hear "flat" I picture a plank. Yet when it comes to SEO, you should really envision (and aim for) a short, wide, pyramid-shaped information architecture. You want to keep the most important (money) pages closest to the top of the structure as they tend to receive the most SEO equity and therefore have an advantage when it comes to ranking.

I also agree there's little consistency when you're scanning blogs looking for examples. Blogging is still relatively new and I think you'll start to see more consistency as competition and player sophistication continues to grow.

I like your thought about using topic labels instead of a vanilla "blog" folder; it's the number of topics I'm not keen on. I think a good rule of thumb is to aim for no more than 5-9 pages at the top of your information architecture for the reasons you yourself have observed above. People do search for "wedding blog" and a bunch of other related but similar terms (perhaps one in your niche? "wedding planning blog") so that could work.

I also think your goal of having rich static + variable topic content pages is an excellent one  and agree that yes, once you get there, they should definitely be indexed.

[MarkWill]

OK, here is something else that is on my mind. We're starting to get into IA at this point and comments are very much appreciated.

So, as I have mentioned I have a number of topics and all of my articles will be associated with one or more of those topics. I plan to use WordPress categories (and maybe tags) to represent those, with the ongoing discussion about URL hierarchy on my mind.

I see the categories as the "meat and potatoes" of how I structure my content. (Since the cat is out the bag) This means cakes, dresses, flowers, etc.

But there's another way to look at the wedding - more along the lines of Planning, Looking Good (dress, makeup, etc), Love and Marriage, etc. These are additional buckets through which a bride might view her wedding.

I'm trying to get my head around whether these concepts are superfluous and/or unnecessary. My worry is that the categories are too granular - though still meaningful - and don't present a simple "roadmap" to the visitor.

Anyway, the reason I am asking is that there may potentially be more than one way to present all this. I like the idea of the "big buckets" above because that first impression is important (I'm taking about the human response here, not search engines) and a list of 15-20 "topics" can be overwhelming. Many of the web sites I used have a first impression that is simple, direct and easy to "consume" - a "1, 2, 3" step process, etc.

I don't know how that maps to SEO-related factors though.

Still chewing on this.

Mark

[MarkWill]

Thank you. Ryan. I had seen articles like this. It's tempting to see an article that is so old as outdated - but there's also the idea that there are some basic, common sense "primitives" that are just as true today That's a good list and I appreciate the pointer.

So, the flatting is something I have convinced myself is worthwhile. The open issue now is "how flat" See the other comments in this thread.

Thanks again.

[MarkWill]

Thank you Donna. Yes, I'm finding this issue of "flatness" to be somewhat tricky because I'm getting plenty of alternative opinions - the nature of this while thing, I guess

You are right about the number of articles, which will run into the hundreds. I've been looking at some successful sites and find very little consistency in this area - some are very flat and some have well-defined structure in their URL schemes.

Can you expand a little on why placing the articles under /blog would be better than having them under one of the topics like /wedding-cakes (I am referring specifically to the URL now, not just from where they are linked)?

Your comments have clarified one aspect (and I'm asking here in case there are some contrary thoughts on this). The topic pages may initially be a simple listing (perhaps auto-created by WordPress, based off of categories). For those I could ensure they are not indexed. Eventually, though, I plan to make these more than mere link pages - I'd like to have useful content on them, pertinent to the topic. So, while the page would hopefully be a "darned good read", that content - once done - would be relatively static. If I achieve that goal (the page has useful but static content), would that be the point to have it indexed? If so, that gives me a framework I can work in and one I can move towards over time.

Thanks.

Mark

[DonnaDuncan]

Hmm.

Will you have a folder for your blog? Something like http://www.domain.ext/blog/<topic-or-category>/articles/<article-name>? I think I found your site (wednet) and it looks like you already have a blog and a few other important pages in the root directory.  </article-name></topic-or-category>

I would NOT park the articles themselves in the root domain. While you want a flat(ish) architecture, you don't want it to be completely level; you want your most important "money" pages in the root directory. If you have 15-20 categories and 3-15 articles per category, you'd have between 45 and 300 posts in the root directory and that's too flat.

If it were me, I'd go with http://www.domain.ext/blog/<article-name>. (Notice I removed "/<topic-or-category>/articles" from the example you provided.) You can use Wordpress to set up topic-or-category pages e.g. http://www.domain.ext/blog/<topic-or-category>/<article-name>, but these should be noindexed. They're there only to make it quick and easy for your audience to find what they're looking for. </article-name></topic-or-category></topic-or-category></article-name>

At some point you may want to start indexing your category pages. There has been lots of discussion about that on this Q&A. It's a personal choice and it can result in increased traffic and conversions BUT you should make an effort to customize category pages so they are absolutely unique before you decide to do that.

[RyanPurkey]

Hi Mark. Rand's comments here still hold true: http://moz.com/blog/11-best-practices-for-urls, especially these in relation to your question, "Fewer Folders" and "Keep it Short" Looks like you'll be hitting on both of those while still maintaining an appropriate amount of keyword usage.  Cheers!