URL Structure and Analytics Reporting

[RishadShaikh59]

Since there are no dumb questions, here's mine:

Our url structure currently displays the date followed by the post title. However, our news website has many categories like world, sports, entertainment etc. Now, when tracking in GA we get to see how many hits a specific page is getting (like entertainment) but since the category is not defined in the URL GA does not add the detail story views to the category page views. To illustrate further, a story from the entertainment section maybe displayed on the Home page and a reader may click on that story and read it without going to the entertainment page. This however, does not reflect in the analytics for that specific page(in this example, the entertainment page).

My question is, should we ammend the url structure to include the categories, if so, would the editor have to do that while composing the post or is there some other way. We are using WP. Or should I create some filters or something on GA.

Thanks!

[RishadShaikh59]

Can you suggest how I would be able to do that by creating filters in GA without having to alter my url structure?

[RishadShaikh59]

But you see, sometimes, a story is published in a particular (lets say sports) category and then displayed on various pages such as the home page, entertainment, latest news etc. Should that have any effect on the url or tracking?

[DavidKauzlaric]

I would recommend against using ".html" in your permalink structure and also categoryname can cause an issue, it's generally just "category".

It's usually a good idea to stick to one category, but if you do need multiple, you can easily adjust the permalink in 2 seconds right on the page after you click "Add New Page" or "Add New Post", it's above the post title, just click EDIT and set it to what you want.

[DavidKauzlaric]

You could do what you wanted by creating filters in GA.

However, for WP, your permalinks should be: /%category%/%postname%/ (custom structure)

Then, whenever you add a new post, you should just click on which category it goes into and it will automatically append the URL like this:  www.yourdomain.com/CATEGORY/POST-TITLE/

You'll have super clean URLs, perfect categorization, and it'd be easier to report on in GA.

That help?