Blog Category Subfolders

[Trent.Warner]

Wondering the opinion on blog category subfolders, in the URL?

Example: www.website.com/blog/**category/blog-post **vs www.website.com/blog/blog-post.

Thanks !

[Roman-Delcarmen]

Exactly that's my point

[Roman-Delcarmen]

Option A) www.website.com/blog/category/blog-post.
Option B) www.website.com/blog/blog-post.

So all depends on your needs and your site structure and the quantity and quality of your content

The structure of a website or a blog is of great importance for its chances to rank in search engines.

• A decent structure makes sure Google ‘understands’ your site.
• A decent structure makes sure you do not compete with your own content.

Talking about your case in the option A your giving the main value to the category page, in the second option your giving the most value to the blog post.

Categories and tags on your website is an important way to add structure to it. These taxonomies group content on a certain topic. When used properly, Search Engines will understand the structure of your site better.

Categories have a hierarchical structure. There can be subcategories within categories. Tags do not have a hierarchical structure. Think of it like this: categories are the table of contents of your website, and tags are the index.

Let's take 2 examples of this on Yoast.com using the option A and backlinko.com using the Option B keep in mind both are very well reputed blogs with an insane amount of traffic

On Yoast they put the strong value on the categories pages, they prefer to focus on category pages, because they have a lot of content and the best way to manage that is grouping that content in categories and tag

test site:yoast.com
the results is About 3,260 results they have a lot of content

Example
So, if have a blog about healthy-food your site structure should look like this:

www.website.com/healthy-food/
www.website.com/healthy-food/recipes (category-1)
www.website.com/healthy-food/tricks    (category-2)
www.website.com/healthy-food/diet-plans    (category-3)
www.website.com/healthy-food/shopping list   (category-4)

1 Category archives are landing pages
Your category archives are more important than individual pages and posts. Those archives should be the first result in the search engines. That means those archives are your most important landing pages. Thus, they should also provide the best user experience. The more likely your individual pages are to expire, the more this is true. In a shop, your products might change, making your categories more important to optimize. Otherwise, you’d be optimizing pages that are going to be gone a few weeks/months later.

2 Categories prevent individual pages from competing
If you sell boxers and you optimize every product page, all those pages will compete for the term ‘boxers’. You should optimize them for their special brand and model, and link them all to the ‘boxers’ category page. That way the category page can rank for ‘boxer’, while the product page can rank for more specific terms. This way, the category page prevents the individual pages from competing.

On the other hands  backlinko.com this site puts emphasis on the single pages, this is because Brian Deans (the guy behind of the sites) prefers to create memorable content, really good articles in low quantities (just make the test site:backlinko.com) there are just 64 pages indexed, basically he prefers to use the Option B approach

https://backlinko.com/
https://backlinko.com/ecommerce-seo
https://backlinko.com/seo-copywriting
https://backlinko.com/keyword-research
https://backlinko.com/ecommerce-seo
https://backlinko.com/seo-copywriting

CONCLUSION

there's no good or bad option all depends on your needs and your content, in both cases your doing a wrong structure

www.website.com/blog/category/blog-post ----> your article is on the 4 level of your site (far away from the home)
www.website.com/blog/blog-post. ---->  your article is on the 3 level of your site (far away from the home)

This is what I strongly recommend

• www.website.com/keyword-related-to-your-blog/keyword-related-to-your-categoy
• www.website.com/keyword-related-to-your-blog/keyword-related-to-your-article

The main idea is to try to avoid the use of generic keywords. As I mentioned all depends on your needs, your content and your audience and NOTE: all this answer is based on my experience, probably others members here can give better adivices but the main idea will be the same.

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