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
-
Brightcove SEO Best Practices?
My company has decided to go with Brightcove as a video platform so we can better monetize all of the video content we create and better customize the experience as well. We have a pretty decent YouTube presence, and I won't let them stop using that because it would totally alienate us from part of our audience. So I was hoping someone could help me with the following: Are we able to keep videos hosted on YouTube as well as Brightcove without any risk of duplicate content? If we use the Brightcove player to embed videos in our on-site content, are we hindering potential organic search visibility? On the embeds, it's looking like it's using an iframe in our content (https://www.leafly.com/news/cannabis-101/sativa-indica-and-hybrid-whats-the-difference-between-cannabis-ty) - We're using a Brightcove WP plugin for the embed, but I was wondering if anyone had suggestions on a better way to implement/if this is even an issue at all. Are there any other general best practices/insights anyone has working with this platform? I found this article on their site, but I was wondering if there was anything else I should consider. Thank you in advance for any insights/answers!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | davidkaralisjr0 -
International Domains for SEO
My company is international and we have websites for each country with Country Code Top Level Domains (ccTLD). I am in the US and I am seeing that other countries such as Costa Rica and Germany are ranking above us in search results. I thought Google automatically geo-targeted users by default and therefore I should only get .com or US results. Any idea why other countries would rank above our site?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | fastlaneus0 -
Should I change my permalink structure?
Hi guys, hope you've had a manageable working week. Just after some advice! What would you think to changing the permalink structure of an already established entertainment website so that the category and postdate also appears in the URL, i.e "2014-01-01/news/this-is-the-post"? I have done it before without thinking about all the crawl errors it would cause and quickly reverted everything. However, I am now eager to get listed in Google News (don't worry, this isn't the only reason to change the URL) and think it might help things overall. Thoughts? Worth the effort or a pointless exercise?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Whittie0 -
Help FORUM ( User generated content ) SEO best practices
Hello Moz folks ! For the very first time im dealing with a massive community who rely on UGC ( user generated content ). Their forum is finding a great deal of duplicate content/broken link/ duplicate title and on-site issue. I have Advance SEO knowledge related to ecommerce or blogging but new to forum and UGC. I would really love to learn or get ressources links that would allow me to see/understand the best practices in term of SEO. Any help is greatly appreciated. Best, Yan
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | ydesjardins2000 -
Is CloudFlare bad for SEO?
I have been hit by DDoS attacks lately...not on a huge scale, but probably done by some "script kiddies" or competitors of mine. Still, I need to take some action in order to protect my server and my site against all of this spam traffic that is being sent to it. In the process of researching the tools available for defending a website from a DDoS attack, I came across the service offered by CloudFlare.com. According to the CloudFlare website, they protect your site against a DDoS attack by showing users/visitors they find suspicious an interstitial that asks them if they are a real user or a bot...this interstitial contains a Captcha that suspicious users are asked to enter in order to visit the site. I'm just wondering what kind of an effect such an interstitial could have on my Google rankings...I can imagine that such a thing could add to increased click-backs to the SERPs and, if Google detects this, to lower rankings. Has anyone had experience with the DDoS protection services offered by CloudFlare, who can say a word or two regarding any effects this may have on SEO? Thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | masterfish1 -
Glossary SEO Tactics
A B2B client has a glossary of about 300 terms on its Website. It was done to enhance SEO value. The pages are rarely viewed and the text is often short. What are the best (and wackiest!) ideas to leverage this content for SEO. Here are some: Add videos, images Cross link to content pages Open up comments and get students in this sector to review terms and add their own What else do you suggest?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | HarrAuto0 -
New folder structure
We are in the process of relaunching one of our website's that will use a totally need folder structure. Previously we used mydomain.com/content/country/region/city/district/hotel_name/ Now we are changing to make the URL shorter, more precise - since we are using a new CMS, to be mydomain.com/gb_Hotel-Name/ My question is currently we've in the region of 10,000 pages indexed in Google. So we are going to have to create 301 permanent redirects from the old URLs to the new URLs. From your previous experience, is this the correct way of approaching the task.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | NeilTompkins0