URL structure

[WalesDragon]

Hi,

I am in the process of having a site created which will focus on the Xbox 360, PS3, Wii and PS3 Vita.

I would appreciate some advice when it comes to the URL structure.  Each category mentioned above will have the following subsections

News
Reviews
Screenshots
Trailers

Would the best url structure be?

www.domain.com/xbox-360/news/news-story-headline
www.domain.com/ps3/reviews/ps3-game-name

Thanks in advance for your help and suggestions.

[Gustav-Northclick]

The timestamp is totally up to you if you think your URL:s will look better without them.

However Google tends to give pages with clear indications of when the information was published a little boosts. And they do mention that freshness is key for content.

So the timestamp is important but I'm guessing that you'll have a timestamp in the article with the standard WP config anyhow so it's really not that essential in the URL.  But If you have many articles it can be good to have a time indicator in them, if only for your own use.

To give yo a better example of how the permalink settings could look in WP:

/%category%/%postname%/

If you do it this way you won't have a timestamp in the URL.

* Remember that WP will use only one category in the permalinks so I reccomend you to only have one category for the URL.

Both way works, just choose one and remember that you need to stick to the one you choose so that the inbound links don't loose effect.

best, G

[WalesDragon]

Thanks Gustav.  Do I really need the timestamp?  (However I am looking to get listed on Google News in the future)

I was thinking of the following structure:-

ps3/ps3-reviews/game-name-review
xbox-360/xbox-360-reviews/game-name-review

[Gustav-Northclick]

That's correct

• otherwise it would be seen as duplicated content.

But that doesn't create any problems for you.

Just set the structure to:

Maincategory/subcategory/nichecategory/timestamp/article

EG:

For Xbox:

Reviews/xbox-360/timestamp/game-review-name

FOr PS3:

Reviews/Ps3/timestamp/game-review-name

This should work fine

Best, G

[WalesDragon]

Thanks for the kind words, both.

It appears that with Wordpress each category (even sub categories) cannot have the same name so for example, "reviews" can only be used once and cannot be used within /xbox-360/reviews/game-review-name and ps3/reviews/game-review-name

Is that correct?

[Ryan-Ricketts]

Great thoughts, but I would just like to add another: you may want to keep all subfolders in lowercase. This could prevent headaches later on if URL characters have a mixture of cases.

[Gustav-Northclick]

Nice thread!

As Marcus mentioned, it's good to have cross platform category, there is however another way

You could:

Instead of using cross platform as a category, simply use rel canonical.

In WP this is simple you just choose the categories eg:  Xbox360, PS3 and Wii and then choose which one that you want as a main indexed article with a rel canonical tag.

Best

Nice work on the site!

[Marcus_Miller]

Yep, I guess, but to play devils advocate here, what if it is a cross platform review?

You could review on one platform, make that the main one and then have the same content on other URLS that have a canonical pointing to the main review.

Alternatively, you could have another category

/cp/ - cross platform

Then you could have:

www.totallygn.com/cp/reviews/fifa12-review

And the review could be listed under all categories from a browsing perspective and just have a caveat that the version reviewed was for PS3.

Either way, this is not going to skyrocket your SEO, but your current URLs are a bit on the long side (standard wordpress set up?).

Just try to choose something that makes for a good, readable, descriptive URL that is not too long and you will be okay.

Oh, and make sure you 301 all the old page addresses else you will run into bigger problems. In fact, take a look at this plugin: http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/redirection/

It gives you loads of 301 options from within wordpress but more importantly, it creates automatic 301 redirects when a posts address changes so it will do  most of the heavy lifting for you. It also logs all 404's so you can see any changes you didnt make and add the relevant rules.

You are doing a lot right though: Wordpress is a great base and your site has tons of great content so so keep at it!

Marcus

[WalesDragon]

Thanks Marcus.  The site currently exists at www.totallygn.com but is not very SEO friendly as you can see.

With regards to what you said above.  If we were to review FIFA 12 for the PS3 would your url be

www.totallygn.com/ps3/reviews/fifa12-review    ?

Thanks again,

Neil

[Marcus_Miller]

Hey, sounds interesting, I am a UK gamer so you will have to let me have a link!

Really, this should be a common sense, usability driven decision so the way you have listed it above seems to work for me.

The main categories are the consoles themselves so

/xbox/
/ps3/
/wii/
/vita/

These then all break down into your four categories so

/xbox/News
/xbox/Reviews
/xbox/Screenshots
/xbox/Trailers

/ps3/News
/ps3/Reviews
/ps3/Screenshots
/ps3/Trailers

This gives you plenty of flexibility to add new root categories, children categories etc and it gets your keywords in your URL if that is your SEO goal here. Ultimately, it makes for a nice, descriptive URL as well.

Good luck with the site!

Marcus