Why does SEOmoz use /blog/content-title vs /category/content-title? Any difference?
-
Assume a brand new blog being designed and all other things equal.
What are the pros & cons between using the url structure /blog/content-title vs. /category/content-title?
Note:
Both scenarios would be using categorical archiving. -
In my experience with content management solutions, it's easier (and thus more common) to keep all blog posts under the blog directory, then use categories in the URL and/or the Title tag (if necessary at all).
That said, most of the time I find categories to be more useful for users, and less helpful for engines.
So, to me the pros of using /category/content-title would only apply if the categories are very straightforward and short (which depends on your industry).
For example, if you run a outdoor hobbies blog, and you have clear, distinct categories like backpacking, camping, hiking, fishing, and so on, then using the category URL structure would be great.
However, if your blog is more specific (say backpacking only), your categories will start to become more convoluted and long, taking up a large part of the URL.
In addition, this can cause unnecessary redundancy in your URLs, which can appear like keyword stuffing.
Overall, I prefer to stick with /blog/content-title, and possibly include the category in the title tag if it's really important.
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
-
Blog On Company Website
I have a huge blog which is connected to a company website. This blog is full with dead links and spam comments. Is it worth to clean up? The website itself ranks very well in search engines. I'm amazed with all de spam that it still ranks. Do you think by removing all de dead links and spam the site will improve ranking in search results?
On-Page Optimization | | bill3690 -
Content on product category pages - does Google care?
Hi All, I've always been unsure about the importance of content on product category pages. Nobody reads it. If you search for "living room chairs", you're just going to want to see a big list of living room chairs - not read content about living room chairs, how to choose one, etc. On virtually any ecommerce site, category pages have a paragraph or two of total bla-bla. Does this have any impact on search rankings? More specifically, will Googlebot see content on how to choose a living room chair and say "Yes! This is really helpful content"? Or, will it realize that the searcher intent on this keyword is really just to see a list of chairs, and ignore this content - or at least downplay its importance? WDTY?
On-Page Optimization | | BarryBuckman0 -
Is this (title) keyword stuffing?
"Animated Explainer Videos by Wick Video" "Video" is used twice. Could this hurt us?
On-Page Optimization | | WickVideo0 -
All category seo plugin on Wordpress page title to working
I've installed the all category seo plugin for Wordpress and all works fine except the page title I input doesn't show. Anyone else had that problem?
On-Page Optimization | | SamCUK0 -
Blog on Subdomain vs. Subdirectory - Best Practices
Hi, I have recently been told that it no longer impacts authority or rankings if a blog is set up on a subdomain (blog.domain.com) rather than a subdirectory (/blog). However, I am reluctant to do so because I remember learning how blog subdomains did not adhere to SEO best practices. Would anyone be able to shed some light on the latest SEO best practices regarding this topic? Many thanks, Erin
On-Page Optimization | | HiddenPeak0 -
Blog URL
I know that this question has been asked in the past, and that website.com/blog is better for seo purposes than blog.website.com. We want to setup a custom blog on our site, using Wordpress. Our designers/host are telling us that buy using website.com/blog can causes issues b/c Wordpress is open source, and our site could be hacked? Is there anything we should do about this? Any suggestions? Any Advice appreciated!!! Thanks!
On-Page Optimization | | TP_Marketing0 -
Duplicat contents on wordpress
I ran a crawl error and found that I have many pages with "tag" i.e. http://www.soobumimphotography.com/tag/70-200-2-8-is/ What's the best way to deal with this problems? Is it worth to visit all of them and fix? Delete? Could you give me some suggestions?
On-Page Optimization | | BistosAmerica0 -
Subdomains vs. Subfolders Inheriting Authority/Ranking Value
Our website is a continuing education website that is linked to a large university, and our URL is a subdomain of that larger university domain. We offer degrees as well, but because of the modifications we'd like to make to the degree webpages, our content management system won't let them be a part of our website. Now we're trying to figure out if we should create a separate subdomain for all degrees, and put the individual degrees in separate folders (so, all degrees' URLs woudl be degrees.us.university.edu/degree-name/), or if we should give each its own URL, which would be completely separate from ours (degree urls would be degree-name.university.edu). So our question is, how well do subdomains carry the value of the domain? Is it better to have twenty websites that are all separate subdomains of a strong domain, or one subdomain in a subdomain that houses all twenty websites in folders? And, as a side note, will housing the degrees in degrees.us.university.edu pass value to us (us.university.edu)? Thanks!
On-Page Optimization | | UWPCE0