Best Permalinks for SEO - Custom structure vs Postname
-
Good Morning Moz peeps,
I am new to this but intending on starting off right! I have heard a wealth of advice that the "post name" permalink structure is the best one to go with however... i am wondering about a "custom structure" combing the "post name" following the below example structure:
Www.professionalwarrior.com/bodybuilding/%postname/
Where "professional" and "bodybuilding" is my focus/theme/keywords of my blog that i want ranked.
Thanks a mill,
RO
-
I try to stay relevant to the
tag of the article or use the Title of the article.
It is not about stuffing keywords in places. It is about relevancy.
Here is a cornerstone article:
https://www.brightvessel.com/21-tips-woocommerce-website-design
One of my supporting article:
https://www.brightvessel.com/multiplying-e-commerce-site-conversions/
At the bottom: I added a link.
If you like this post, check out 21 Tips for WooCommerce Website Design
For me, I like things to be understandable and relevant to each article I link to, which works. I would use the mindset that your providing information and how you link that information needs to display that way.
-
Would love to hear what structure you use Judd
Thanks,
RO
-
Thanks Judd - it does. I feel like categories are not the way to go for me either.
How would you link to cornerstone article by means of a hyperlink in the sub blog post?
What permalink structure do you use?
Thanks
RO
-
Hi,
Without diving in and doing a whole SEO breakdown. Here is an example of how I could explain what I would do for my site.
My Corner Strone Article:
21 Tips on How to Build a Good Homepage Design
Permalink: /web-design/21-tips-homepage-design
Category: web-design
I choose "not" to add my categories to my permalinks to make them short. The shorter the URL the easier to remember and the better you rank. In this example, I added a category.
On the URLs, try not to use "Stop Words" which are "Of, the, that, is, etc."
Additional articles linking back to the cornerstone article.
1. Title: What Makes a Good Website Header Design?
Permalink: /web-design/good-website-header-design
2. Title: Example of Website Design Banner Ads
Permalink: /web-design/website-design-banner-ads
3. Title: Important Design Elements for a Website Footer
Permalink: /web-design/design-elements-website-footer
Each article would have supporting information which would link back to an overall article.
Make sense?
-
Thank you Judd!
This is great advice. My content wouldn't be a popular search on the internet such as the abundance of say beauty blogs or recipes/lifestyle blogs but yet i feel the topics/keywords i would write about could be somewhat repetitive and quite a niche/narrow focus.
Wondering if you could give me your opinion of what you think about the video/permalink strategy in the video above?
Really appreciate it.
RO
-
If you have several articles pertaining to the same topic then consider making the best one the "Cornerstone Article"
https://yoast.com/what-is-cornerstone-content/
"Cornerstone content plays a significant role in any SEO strategy. It can be rather hard to rank for search terms that are very popular. A cornerstone approach could help you tackle those competitive search terms. If you write a lot of articles about similar blog posts, you need to tell Google which one is the most important. Otherwise, you’ll be competing with your content for a place in the search results. If you provide the proper internal linking structure between your posts, you can show Google which article is the most important."
-
Thank you for responding with these great supplementing articles. Very helpful! Which leads me to follow up questions if you dont mind. I wasn't so much getting to using categories but more what is desribed in the video below circa 3.50 mins in.
Its more of a one time static "category" for the rest of your blogs life to drive key words/ranking. The more i read I'm thinking this could be determental. Or a srtoke of genus?
Second question.... related to point #4 in the first article ( Multiple URLS serving the same content); i feel like my blog posts could be construed as containing the same information/ key words over and over as they will be drilled down detail into very narrow focused/niche content. Would this be considered duplication content?
Thank you very much for you response and guidance!
-
RO,
This is a great article:
https://moz.com/blog/15-seo-best-practices-for-structuring-urls
See:
#6
Shorter URLs are, generally speaking, preferable. You don't need to take this to the extreme, and if your URL is already less than 50-60 characters, don't worry about it at all. But if you have URLs pushing 100+ characters, there's probably an opportunity to rewrite them and gain value.
I tend to not have a category in my URL and see this practice most of the time when surfing around.
Also, see this article:
https://yoast.com/wordpress-seo-url-permalink/
See:
Should I use the category in my permalink structure?
If your domain name is nice and short and you use short, yet descriptive category names, you can easily include a category in your permalink structure which can benefit your website, but beware: if you end up with a lengthy slug and category name, it will make sharing the URL more difficult and won’t have much added value in Google.
If you decide to use categories in your permalink structure, make sure that you only select one category per post. For some more information regarding using categories in your permalink structure, I advise you to watch the following video by Matt on this section.
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
-
Pagination & SEO
Hi We have automatically created brand pages based on which brand they have in their attributes. At the moment, developers have restricted the ability to properly optimise these for SEO, but I also wanted to look at how we should handle pagination. Example: http://www.key.co.uk/en/key/brand/manutan?page=1 http://www.key.co.uk/en/key/brand/manutan?page=2 http://www.key.co.uk/en/key/brand/manutan?page=3 Should we do any of the following - which I've found in an article: Put no follow on all links located on pagination pages Should we no index these pages as they are wasting crawl budget? - Don’t show links to page 2, 3, 4, 5… 10, 11, 12… at the end of your content but only a link to the next and previous pages so that you won’t dilute your page authority. Or does anyone else have any tips on how to handle these pages? Thank you!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | BeckyKey0 -
95% of organic traffic lands in my homepage, despite having a 250 page website with a "seo optimized" hierarchical structure. Any suggestion as to what might be happening?
Challenging issue All the "usual suspects" have been discarded: all pages included in google index, no google penalties, metas optimized, kw's segregated by pages/cluster of pages to avoid cannibalization... BUT, we know we are missing something website is www.e-florex.com and is an e-commerce site based on magento Any ideas you might think are worth exploring? Thanks in advance for your help Juan
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | juanmarn0 -
Subdomains vs. Subfolders vs. New Site
Hello geniuses!!! Here's my Friday puzzle: We have a plastic surgery client who already has a website that's performing fairly well and is driving in leads. She is going to be offering a highly specialized skincare program for cancer patients, and wants a new logo, new website and new promo materials all for this new skincare program. So here's the thing - my gut reaction says NO NEW WEBSITE! NO SUBDOMAIN! because of everything I've read about moving things on and off subdomains, etc (I just studied this: http://moz.com/blog/subdomains-vs-subfolders-rel-canonical-vs-301-how-to-structure-links-optimally-for-seo-whiteboard-friday). And, why wouldn't we want to use the authority of her current site, right? While she doesn't necessarily have a high authority domain - we're not talking WebMD, here - she does have some authority that we've built over time. But, because this is a pretty separate product from her general plastic surgery practice, what would you guys do? Since we'll be creating a logo and skincare "look and feel" for this product, and there will likely be a lot of information involved with it, I don't think we'll be able to just create one page. Is it smart to: a) build a separate site in a subfolder of her current site? (plasticsurgerypractice.com/skincare) b) build a subdomain? (skincare.plasticsurgerypractice.com) c) build her a new site (plasticsurgeryskincare.com)
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | RachelEm0 -
Zenfolio set up for SEO
We are using zenfolio as a hosted photography/image gallery set up as http://oursite.zenfolio.com We have about 24,000 backlinks to the website however over 22,000 are from zenfolio.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | jazavide
Do you see issues with this set up from an organic seo perspective and so many links from one domain pointing back into the main site?
Thanks0 -
SEO Problem with PowerPoint to PDF?
Can anyone think of any reasons why it would be a bad idea to use PowerPoint to create documents and then convert them to PDFs? Do you think this could cause any crawling issues for Google?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | BlueLinkERP0 -
SEO Tools
Anyone have any experience and thoughts about the woo rank website and seo tool?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | casper4341 -
Redirection - Seo trick?
Hi, After analyzing the site I found several Redirections of exact match domains. With different domain name extensions. Is Seo trick? Is the second website which i fond that is using this technique. Can anyone gives more details? Thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | nyanainc0 -
Best SEO META Description for forum topics
What would be the best SEO META Description tag for forum topics on a forum type website? I can think of a few options so far Snippet of first post. Title of the topic with templated trailing text Remove description tag completely Your thoughts and suggestions are greatly appreciated.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Peter2640