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
-
Seo for international sites
Hello, I have a question for the group, our main US site- http://www.datacard.com is utilized to move content to other regional sites like http://www.datacard.co.uk/ and http://www.datacard.fr/ and http://www.datacard.com.br/. Anyhow, we essentially have some regional content on those sites, but for ease of maintaining and updating the content we have a company translate this for us and then undergo an in country review for local people in our company to review the content. That being said the meta descriptions, titles, code, everything gets translated to that language. I know there are issue for SEO for these purposes as we get much better rankings with http://www.datacard.com. The regional sites are newer so this could be part of it. We don't have an agency helping us with SEo and i get a lot of questions on what can be done internally for this for regional sites with our current structure. Any tips you have? It would be greatly appreciated! Laura
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | lauramrobinson320 -
International SEO Domain Structure
Hi Guys, I am wondering if anybody can point me to a recent trusted report or study on international domain name structure and SEO considerations. I am looking to read up on the SEO considerations and recommendations for the different domain structures in particular using sub-directories i.e. domain.com/uk, domain.com/fr. Kind regards,
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | WeAreContinuum
Cian1 -
Recommended URL Structure
Hello, We are currently adding a new section of content on our site related to Marketing and more specifically 'Digital Marketing' (research reports, trend studies, etc). Over time (several months, or 1-3 years) we will add more 'general' marketing content. My question is which of the following URL structures makes more sense from an SEO perspective (and how best to quantify the benefit of one over another): www.mysite.com/marketing/digital/research/... www.mysite.com/digital-marketing/research/.. Thanks, Mike
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | mike-gart0 -
Local SEO tips
Hi! I'm working on http://www.hgsplumbingandheating.co.uk/ at the moment, and it's going pretty well for local terms such as 'Norwich plumber' etc. Has anyone got any tips though on how it can be improved, especially with regard to getting the homepage ranking above the Places listings? Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | neooptic0 -
Multinational SEO
Hi all The situation: We have a .com website that is the core of our business over the last 3 years we have built this into a very sucessful brand. Customers are able to purchase products from our website and have it delivered anywhere in the world. As part of the development of our business we want to obviously rank high within serps regardless of what country our potential customer is from. We understand that we will need to translate much of our website to achieve this and that is something that we have in the pipeline. My question is more aimed at the English speaking countries and how we should optimise our website for these. For example: websitename.com.au and websitename.co.uk were initialy setup as 301 redirects to websitename.com, however, we have now set them up as their own domains which display the exact same content as the .com website. So to clarify the content on websitename.com/product1.html is also on websitename.com.au/product1.html and websitename.co.uk/product1.html What would the best way to ensure that our .com.au and .co.uk gain traction within the appropriate country? Is duplicate content still an issue? All our prices are displayed in USD will this go againts? We use US English (with a sprinkle of chinglish) as our websites copy languange should we change spelling for AU and UK? Does anyone have any case studies and or other reports I can read that may help me find the right solution for us. Thanks Danny
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | DannyCarter0 -
Where is the best place to find an SEO coach?
I'm looking for a coach who can help me get to the next level with SEO and help me determine what's junk and what's true advice. Are there any recommendations any of you have out there on where to find such a person?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | kadesmith0 -
Effects on SEO with CDN
Should we be concerned about any adverse consequences to our site's SEO value when moving the site's assets (javascript files and css files) to a CDN (Akamai)?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Volusion.com0