Moz Q&A is closed.
After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.
/%category%/%postname%/ Permalink structure
-
Mostly everyone seems to agree that /%category%/%postname%/ is the best blog structure.
I'm thinking of changing my structure to that because now it's structured by date which is bad. But almost all of my posts are assigned to more than one category. Won't this create duplicate pages?
-
Thanks!
-
Did you find any reason of site declining?
Send me an url, I will take a look

-
Yes, our positions are gradually declining, and I'm trying everything I can, no matter how seemingly small, until I can figure out why.
-
Hi again

I think that depends on what is the position of your site now. If it's good there is no pressure to do changes in other case you can take a risk. In my opinion good structure of content help in SEO an if I were in your situation i would take a risk of change.
-
Another question is which would be worse for SEO: leaving it the way it is, categorized by month and date, or changing the whole structure when I have dozens of posts?
-
Thanks for the input. The reason I'm worried about duplicate pages is because what i temporarily switched everything to category/postname, I could access pages many different ways.
category1/postname/page
category2/postname/page
anothercategory/postname/page
Were all the same page. Duplicate content?
-
I agree with Marek. However, there's value in having the Category in there specially if your categories are keyword rich. Don't worry about duplicate pages. One post will only have one default category in the Slug (Most of the times, its the 1st one you selected in Wordpress). I also sometimes like to use /%category%/%postname%.html or /%category%/%postname%.php which gives the effect of pages under a folder, vs folder inside a folder. Just my 2c.
-
Hi Marisa,
I'm using /%postname% and in my opinion it is a best structure ... but ... in that kind of structure is important to care about slug and to prevent creation of duplicated titles.
/the-best-solution is a good slug
//the-best-solution-2 is not a good slug
I don't have duplicated pages cos WordPress has mechanism which check the slug in real time when you creating a post.
I think that /%postname% is the most friendly link structure.
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
-
Remove Product & Category from URLS in Wordpress
Does anyone have experience removing /product/ and /product-category/, etc. from URLs in wordpress? I found this link from Wordpress which explains that this shouldn't be done, but I would like some opinions of those who have tried it please. https://docs.woocommerce.com/document/removing-product-product-category-or-shop-from-the-urls/
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | moon-boots0 -
Disallow: /jobs/? is this stopping the SERPs from indexing job posts
Hi,
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | JamesHancocks1
I was wondering what this would be used for as it's in the Robots.exe of a recruitment agency website that posts jobs. Should it be removed? Disallow: /jobs/?
Disallow: /jobs/page/*/ Thanks in advance.
James0 -
Category Page as Shopping Aggregator Page
Hi, I have been reviewing the info from Google on structured data for products and started to ponder.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Alexcox6
https://developers.google.com/search/docs/data-types/products Here is the scenario.
You have a Category Page and it lists 8 products, each products shows an image, price and review rating. As the individual products pages are already marked up they display Rich Snippets in the serps.
I wonder how do we get the rich snippets for the category page. Now Google suggest a markup for shopping aggregator pages that lists a single product, along with information about different sellers offering that product but nothing for categories. My ponder is this, Can we use the shopping aggregator markup for category pages to achieve the coveted rich results (from and to price, average reviews)? Keen to hear from anyone who has had any thoughts on the matter or had already tried this.0 -
What does Disallow: /french-wines/?* actually do - robots.txt
Hello Mozzers - Just wondering what this robots.txt instruction means: Disallow: /french-wines/?* Does it stop Googlebot crawling and indexing URLs in that "French Wines" folder - specifically the URLs that include a question mark? Would it stop the crawling of deeper folders - e.g. /french-wines/rhone-region/ that include a question mark in their URL? I think this has been done to block URLs containing query strings. Thanks, Luke
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | McTaggart0 -
Structured Data + Meta Descriptions
Hey All, Was just looking through some google pages on best practices for meta descriptions and came across this little tidbit. "Include clearly tagged facts in the description. The meta description doesn't just have to be in sentence format; it's also a great place to include structured data about the page. For example, news or blog postings can list the author, date of publication, or byline information. This can give potential visitors very relevant information that might not be displayed in the snippet otherwise. Similarly, product pages might have the key bits of information—price, age, manufacturer—scattered throughout a page. A good meta description can bring all this data together. For example, the following meta description provides detailed information about a book. " This is the first time I have seen suggested use of structured data in meta descriptions. Does this totally replace a regular meta description or will it work in conjunction with the regular meta description? If I provide both structured data and text, will the SERP display text and the structured data the way it was previously displayed? Or will the 150 -160 character limit take precedence and just cut off all info after that?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Whebb0 -
How to 301 redirect old wordpress category?
Hi All, In order to avoid duplication errors we've decided to redirect old categories (merge some categories).
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | BeytzNet
In the past we have been very generous with the number of categories we assigned each post. One category needs to be redirected back to blog home (removed completely) while a couple others should be merged. Afterwords we will re-categorize some of the old posts. What is the proper way to do so?
We are not technical, Is there a plugin that can assist? Thanks0 -
Yoast SEO Plugin: To Index or Not to index Categories?
Taking a poll out there......In most cases would you want to index or NOT index your category pages using the Yoast SEO plugin?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | webestate0 -
Product URL structure for a marketplace model
Hello All. I run an online marketplace start-up that has around 10000 products listed from around 1000+ sellers. We are a similar model to etsy/ebay in the sense that we provide a platform but sellers to list products and sell them. I have a URL structure question. I have read http://www.seomoz.org/q/how-to-define-best-url-structure-for-product-pages which seems to show everyone suggests to use Products: products/category/product-name Categories: products/category as the structure for product pages. Because we are a marketplace (our category structure has multiple tiers sometimes up to 3) our sellers choose a category for products to go in. How we have handled this before is we have used: Products: products/last-tier-category-chosen/product-name (eg: /products/sweets-and-snacks/fluffy-marshmallows) Categories: products/category (eg: /products/sweets-and-snacks) However we have two issues with this: The categories can sometimes change, or users can change them which means the links completely change and undo any link building work built up. The urls can get a bit long and am worried that the most important data (the fluffy marshmallow that reflects in the page title and content) is left till too late in the URL. As a result we plan to change our URL structure (we are going through a rebuild anyhow so losing old links is not an issue here) so that the new structure was: Products: products/product-name(eg: /products/fluffy-marshmallows) Categories: products/category (eg: /products/sweets-and-snacks) My concern about doing this however, and question here, is whether this willnegatively impact the "structure" of pages when google crawls our marketplace.Because "fluffy marshmallows" will no longer technically fit into the url structure of "sweets and snacks". I dont know if this would have a negative impact or not. FYI etsy (one of the largest marketplace models in the world) us the latter approach and do not have categories in product urls, eg: listing/42003836/vintage-french-industrial-inspired-side Any ideas on this? Many thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | LiamPatterson0