Change category of a post
-
Hi,
Finally I decide to renovate my site structure, but I have a question, if I have an old post and I change its category there is some SEO problem? The post permalink is "www.sitename.com/namepost".
Last question, it's better to have one category for post or more than one category for post?
Thank You
-
As Martijn said, tagging multiple categories to a post can help with crawling due to more internal linking. Fortunately, if your URL is just sitename.com/post-title, then you can change/add existing categories and it won't make a difference as the URL won't change, so you won't have to redirect anything. If you're renaming categories, changing the category URLs, you may still want to redirect the old category URLs to the new category URLs to preserve the category pages' authority though.
If the site structure is more like sitename.com/category/post-title, that's when it may become an issue and you will want to redirect the old URL to the new URL. If you use Wordpress, I believe it will automatically redirect the old URL to the new URL if you do change the category. (Definitely test this to make sure it works with your version/plugins.) There are also plugins to help you tag multiple categories to a post but, setting a preference for the permalink category.
-
Hi Marco,
If the permalink structure is just the post slug then you should be good by changing or adding/removing multiple categories. If it would be the case that the category is part of the URL structure then I would be careful.
There can be upsides in linking to multiple categories as they would get more internal links which would build a better structure.
Martijn.
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
-
My blog post for a specific keyword is in the 'omitted results'. Why might this be, and how to overcome it?
My website Homepage: http://kulraj.org Here is the page I am working to rank for:** http://kulraj.org/2014/07/15/hedonic-treadmill/** When I search specifically for 'kulraj hedonic treadmill' just to test it, the first result is this: kulraj.org_/tag/_hedonic-treadmill. It shows the shortened version of the article that is within the Tag page. [I'm new to SEO and Moz, please keep in mind] Moz has told me I have duplicate content, which is regarding my main Blog page and Tags page, which is true the content is duplicate. However, the actual blog post itself is not displayed anywhere else on the website, or anywhere else on the web. Moz confirms this, and reports no duplicate content warning. My questions, therefore, are: 1. How do I actually go about installing a rel canonical tag within a standard WordPress dashboard (I'm using Genesis Framework) - I'm finding great difficulty finding instructions on this anywhere on the web. I clearly need to fix the issue with Blog page and Tags Page. 2. Why would my blog post be omitted, and are there any suggestions I could implement to bring it into the main search results. Other things I've noticed: 1. If I type this URL in: kulraj.org/hedonic-treadmill, it automatically redirects to http://kulraj.org/2014/07/15/hedonic-treadmill/ 2. Inside Google Webmaster Tools it says: No new messages or recent critical issues. 3. Regarding the above, when I click 'Labs > author stats' within Webmaster Tools, it shows nil stats, so something there is not quite right either, even though Google+ Authorship is confirmed.
Technical SEO | | Kulraj0 -
Changing broken links and Anchor text be a problem?
Hi, Changing broken links and Anchor text be a problem? We have 80K pages which has about 40K links which has been created in the last few years and from last month we have been working on updating content on those pages that's old and links that are broken and changing the anchor text in those posts. Anchor text like Click me, Here,Download, link, etc is changed to meaningful words. its a total close to 10K link replacements and 10K anchor text. While doing this from last month have seen a slight decrease in daily traffic. is this something Google would consider as some kind of a wrong webmaster activity? or its just fine? Thanks
Technical SEO | | mtthompsons0 -
Should each new blog post be added to Sitemap.xml
Hello everyone, I have a website that has only static content. I have recently added a Blog to my website and I am wondering if I need to add each new Blog post to my Sitemap.xml file? Or is there another way/better way to get the Blog posting index? Any advice is greatly appreciated!
Technical SEO | | threebiz0 -
Facebook likes for a blog - are posts or root domain more important?
I've just added the facebook plugin for my wordpress blog. I've activated the like buttons on each post and I share the posts on facebook - so when someone likes it on facebook, it reflects on the blog post. In my blog sidebar I've added the Like widget. I can either put the URL for it as my blog root domain (not many likes yet) or my facebook page (lots of likes, so more impressive) I've been hearing about Likes etc counting towards SEO, so I'm wondering if anyone can tell me whether developing Likes for my blog root domain will have any significant benefit over the Likes I am getting for the individual posts?
Technical SEO | | AISFM0 -
Same product in Multiple categories ecommerce store, best way to avoid duplicate content?
Hello All, Im building a magento store, with around 500 products. One thing is that I am going to have some products in Multiple categories. Do you think the best solution is to remove any category name from the url structure or would this devalue SEO? Also would the use of canonical links remove any duplicate content issues if the category name was left in. So overall what would get better results No category name in URL (e.g.phonename-model1.html) V category name in url (e.g. phones/phonename-model1.html / videophones/phonename-model1.html +using canonical links Any feedback or views would be great
Technical SEO | | voipme0 -
Should i change the url name for serp plural from singular to plural please advise
Hi, I have an established ecommerce site online since 2008 when I set it up I did not really think about it and i called it mywidget. However the traffic is minimum 10 times higher for plural and all the long tails ie bluewidgets, cheapwidgets are all plural. I rank very well on the widget but not widgets - I know there is more competition but still it would be best to have the most commonly used phrases in the url. Now I have registered mywidgets should i transfer my shop to mywidgets and setup a permanen redirect 301 for all the products url and categories. I'm guessing I will be negatively impacted in the short term but in the long term it should be worth it. Would you agree sorry its a massive decision for me and any help would be much appreciated. Many thanks
Technical SEO | | reallyitsme0 -
Do sub-categories and categories behave similarly in WordPress?
Hi, I'm aware of the SEO benefit in category pages and would like to implement them on my (client's) site. Unfortunately, the developer set up the blog where there is one parent category called 'blog' and the rest of the categories are sub-categories, underneath the parent. While it seems like an easy fix, he claims that it's not because of some programmer jargon I can't understand. So my question is, can subcategories offer same or similar value as categories, or do I go head to head with this charming guy?
Technical SEO | | 5225Marketing0 -
Wordpress plugin for facilitating adding a post descriptions
Could anyone recommend a plugin for creating wordpress post descriptions. There is a confusingly large selection of choices in the wordpress plugins directory.
Technical SEO | | catherine-2793880