Lately I’ve been spending more time working on aesthetics, performance, and friendliness of this site. Now I’ve come to a very important decision to make and that is, should I change my permalink/organizational structure? I’ve read several blogs that say a /%category%/%post-title%/ is the best way to go because it adds depth as well as search engine optimization (SEO) strength since the category can be viewed as another keyword. Based on that, I would assume that a permalink structure that includes subcategories (i.e. example.com/category/subcategory/post-title) would rank even better, no? The criticisms of this structure seems to be that the permalink becomes too long, especially with more descriptive post titles. On the contrary, I’ve also heard that using a permalink structure with no categories and just a post title (example.com/post-title) permits more descriptive permalinks. The only other permalink structure that I’ve considered is the domain/year/month/date/post-title arrangement which is already in use here.
What if we examine prominent SEO related blogs or blogs of prominent people that work in the field of search? For instance, Matt Cutts uses the domain/blog/post-title structure but said that including the post date in your URL structure does not affect PageRank flow (see video below at 00:27:00). As a side note and for future reference, I’ve created a SEO Blogs search engine to help discover answers to common SEO questions. Here’s a list of what some popular SEO blogs recommend to be the optimal wordpress permalink structure (found by searching SEO Blog Search Engine for: wordpress and “permalink structure” or “url structure”):
- SearchEngineJournal - domain/%postname%/%post_id%/
- Yoast - domain/post-title
- GrayWolf’s SEO Blog - /%category%/%postname%/
- MarketingPilgrim’s Andy Beal - Suggests using a permalink structure that includes numbers, “if you have aspirations of seeing your blog syndicated in Google News” as “One of the requirements for entry is to have at least three numbers in your slugs, so that Google can identify your posts from your other blog content. Using “myblog.com/my-post-title” would likely preclude you from Google News”
- Blue Hat SEO - /%postname%/
- Pronet Advertising - Neil Patel suggests domain.com/posttitle
Now that we’ve seen what they suggest, what URL structure do these popular SEO sites actually use? After all, these are considered the authority on search engine optimization and therefore would be expected to implement and use the most effective URL structure, right?
SearchEngineLand.com - domain/postname/post_id/
SeoBook.com - domain/postname/
SeoMoz.org/blog - domain/blog/postname/
MattCutts.com/blog - domain/blog/postname/
SearchEngineWatch.com/blog - blog.domain/postname/
SeRoundTable.com - domain/archives/post_id/
SearchEngineJournal.com - domain/postname/post_id/
TopRankBlog.com - domain/year/month/postname/
PronetAdvertising.com - domain/articles/postname/.html
MarketingPilgrim.com - domain/year/month/postname/.html
SeoChat.com - domain/c/a/category/postname/
SearchEngineGuide.com - domain/author/postname/.php
SeoBlackHat.com - domain/year/month/day/postname/
StuntDubl.com - domain/year/month/day/postname/
Wolf-Howl.com - domain/category/postname/
SeoByTheSea.com - domain/post_id/
JimBoyKin.com - domain/postname/
SeoPedia.org - domain/category/postname/
DavidNaylor.co.uk - domain/postname/.html
BruceClay.com/blog - domain/blog/archives/year/month/postname/.html
BlueHatSeo.com - domain/postname/
SeoRefugee.com/seoblog/index.php - domain/category/year/month/day/postname/
SmallBusinessSem.com - domain/postname/post_id/
Yoast.com - domain/postname/
Here’s a list of some of Matt’s suggestions for optimizing your WordPress blog:
- You may not want to put your blog in the root of your domain and instead add it to a subdirectory named “blog” (not “WordPress”) because at some point you may want to do something else with the domain besides just blogging. Also, when people link to your site you may get a little extra PageRank boost because there are now two sources for which they can link to (example.com and example.com/blog)
- Use dashes in your permalinks
- Make sure your backlinks are standardized; choose either www or non-www, not both
- Include relevant keywords in your titles, and synonyms of those keywords in your title slugs and within the post’s content
- Always include alt tags with your images
- Use full text feeds to promote loyal readers
- Make sure your site is viewable on smartphones and iphones
- Implement section targeting if you are using AdSense
Here’s some extra SEO tips from Joost de Valk’s WordPress Optimization Strategies presentation that was delivered at A4UExpo London:
Well, there you have it! That’s what most of the leading SEO professionals are using and saying about what is the optimal URL structure for your WordPress blog. Now it’s your turn; do you know of a better URL strategy?
What permalink structure do YOU use and, more importantly, WHY did you choose that one?
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I dont know that I’d use what’s being done on an SEO’s blog as any sort of guideline for best practices. In my case my blog is more of a mad scientists lab than the pinnacle of an R&D facility that conforms to all OSHA standards if you know what I mean.
Well, now you tell me!?
Thanks for chiming in here Michael, it’s an honor to have you here. So, are you saying that we should follow the “do as I say, not as I do” motto when it comes to SEO pros?
That would actually make sense now because as I searched Google for “SEO”, I noticed that all but a few of those blogs were listed within the top 100 search results. It’s sort of confusing to me because conventional wisdom would say that if SEO is your specialty, wouldn’t it be important to rank high for that keyword and related keywords/phrases?
Mad scientist…good one
Interesting post. I think the words you choose to include in the URL, meta description, and page title are more important than the format of the URL. However, I have heard that keeping directories to one or two sub-directories is good and that search engines will ignore sub-directories that are greater than seven levels deep.
Yep, I finally got around to allocating all my posts to only one category per post. Before I was using categories more freely and assigning many per post. It’s sometimes just not very clear where to assign a post in that it may be a good fit for several categories. Regardless, I believe that it is better to only assign one category as it prevents duplicate content and creates a more search engine friendly organizational structure for your site. Another great thing about creating organizational structure is that it actually causes you to think about your goals for the site and it’s direction. It took some serious consideration and I am still not sure that I got it figured out yet
Kevin, why does your set of tag cloud links in the right sidebar each have the rel=”nofollow” attribute? Seems like the tag cloud is too large to be useful to users but that it might provide SEO value by associating many keywords to one post. However, that SEO value is negated with the use of rel=”nofollow”.
Hey thanks for the heads up Robert. I’ve changed things around here so much a I actually forgot about that
I rely on what I believe to be the simplest URL structure for human beings to decipher, which is domain/postname for my blog. I didn’t really take search engines into account in making that decision…it was primarily with my user and any bookmarks they might save of my posts in mind. I tend to be of the mindset to “Keep It Simple Stupid” with regard to URL structure.
Oh! Before I forget…just a tip to anyone using WordPress and considering changing their permalink structure: before you do, install the “Redirection” plugin for WordPress. It can be set to automatically generate a 301 redirect when a post’s URL changes…that way existing links don’t get broken and the PR will still flow from the old URL to the new one. The plugin is a great time-saver if you’ve got a large number of posts and you’re considering changing your permalink structure.
Hey Alysson, thanks for the tip on Redirection. Could you explain what the differences are between Redirection and Objection Redirection?
I have a nice and structured category list, with a lot of subcategories.
Example:
- Main news
- - Sports
- - - Football
- - - Baseball
- - - Curling
- - National news
- - - politics
- - - health
- - - environment
In the past these category slugs have been part of the permalink structure, eg: main-news/sports/football/postname
But after upgrading to 2.6 this seems not to be the case anymore, result: main-news/postname. It’s missing all the subcategories.
Unfortunately I HAVE to maintain this structure in the front-end of the site, due to indexed search results, bookmarks etc. Besides that, i believe it looks nice, logical and professional.
In the permalink settings I’m having the same settings as allways: Custom Structure: /%category%/%postname%/ which worked fine, until now.
Does anyone had the same problem, and a solution to this annoying problem ??
Kevin reply on October 29th, 2008 3:21 pm:
I haven’t experienced that nor have I seen a solution to your problem. You may consider hiring an experienced WP developer to fix it for you if you can’t fix it yourself. If you want, I can suggest an excellent developer that may be able to help. Email me through the Contact page if you would like me to give you his contact info.