Blog URLs
-
I read somewhere - pretty sure is was in Art of SEO - that having dates in the blog permalink URLs was a bad idea.
e.g. /blog/2011/3/my-blog-post/
However, looking at Wordpress best practice, it's also not a good idea to have a URL without a number - it's more resource hungry if you don't , apparently.
e.g. /blog/my-blog-post/
Does anyone have any views on this?
Thanks
Ben
-
Thanks Tom,
That's all very useful stuff, and food for thought.
Cheers
Ben
-
Hi Ben,
The benefits include:
-
having a shorter URL
-
moving keywords to earlier positions in the URL
-
making the pages appear not so deep in the site structure
Some people have said they don't want the date in the URL to devalue a post in a readers mind, where others have said it is useful information for a reader to know the date of a post.
As with most things SEO, it is a case of 'it depends'.
I would add that the 301 redirects shouldn't take too long to sort out and test, and so don't let that weigh too heavily into your decision; decide what you think is the best decision from the SEO point of view and then worry about if that means you need to do 301 redirects,
-Tom
-
-
Fight, Fight!
Thanks everyone, that's useful to know. Can anyone explain the SEO advantages of removing the year and month from my URLs? And are they significant enough, that I should consider doing it - with the necessary 301 redirects in place?
Ben
-
Trust me, you won't run into any resource problems unless you plan to serve to the ten's of thousands!
I personal use mysite.com/postname as I find the category of a post dilutes the target keywords.
-
Ben - you could start a real fight on this topic!!
I myself am a:
/blog/category/post-name/
or
/blog/post-name/
kind of guy, but it can differ depending on circumstances.
It is important to decide on a convention, then stick to it, and make sure you are serving each post via only a single URL. If you've not checked out 'All in one SEO pack' for Wordpress then certainly take a look at that.
-
I use /%category%/%postname%/ haven't had any resource problems yet.
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
-
Use existing page with bad URL or brand new URL?
Hello, We will be updating an existing page with more helpful information with the goal of reaching more potential customers through SEO and also attaching a SEM campaign to the specific landing page. The current URL of the page scores 25 on Page Authority, and has 2 links to it from blog articles (PA 35, 31). The current content needs to be rewritten to be more helpful and also needs some additional information. The downsides are that it has an "bad" URL- no target keyword and uses underscores. Which of the following choices would you make? 1. Update this old "bad" URL with new content. Benefit from the existing PA. -or- 2. Start with a new optimized URL, reusing some of the old content and utilizing a 301 redirect from the previous page? Thank you!
Technical SEO | | XLMarketing0 -
URL Parameters to Ignore
Hi Mozers, **We have a glossary of terms made up of a main page that lists out ALL of the terms, and then individual pages per alphabet letter that limit the results to that specific alphabet letter. These pages look like this: ** https://www.XXXX.XXX/publications/dictionaries/XXX-terms?expand=A https://www.XXXX.XXX/publications/dictionaries/XXX-terms?expand=B https://www.XXXX.XXX/publications/dictionaries/XXX-terms?expand=C https://www.XXXX.XXX/publications/dictionaries/XXX-terms?expand=D etc. If I'd like Google to remove all of these "expand=" pages from the index, such that only the main page is indexed, what is the exact parameter that I should ask Google to ignore in Search Console? "expand=" ? Just want to make sure! Thanks for the help!!!
Technical SEO | | yaelslater1 -
How to optimize Wordpress.org hosted blogs
I've got a blog I'm working on that isn't self-hosted. I've attached a screenshot of the message I get if I try to install any plugins. I really want to block archive, author, tag, category, etc pages but I can't seem to find a way since there's no server for me to block via robots.txt or .htaccess and I can't actually install these plugins which would give me the ability to do it. Any suggestions? vQfnt
Technical SEO | | ShawnW0 -
Want to change URL for a page
Hey there Mozzers. I want to change the url of a certain page on my website. Example: www.example.com/poker-face I want to change this www.example.com/poker-faces Should I create a new page and make the old one 301? Does 301 pass all the link juice in the new page or do i have to make a rel=canonical also ?
Technical SEO | | Angelos_Savvaidis0 -
301 redirect blog posts from old URL to new one
I moved a wordpress blog from domain.com to domain.com/blog . I want to redirect the links in google from the old domain.com to the new one, but I also want to put a new site/application at domain.com..so I'm thinking an .htaccess 301 redirect at the root wouldn't work. Any tips?
Technical SEO | | callmeed0 -
Duplicate content with same URL?
SEOmoz is saying that I have duplicate content on: http://www.XXXX.com/content.asp?ID=ID http://www.XXXX.com/CONTENT.ASP?ID=ID The only difference I see in the URL is that the "content.asp" is capitalized in the second URL. Should I be worried about this or is this an issue with the SEOmoz crawl? Thanks for any help. Mike
Technical SEO | | Mike.Goracke0 -
Duplicate content error - same URL
Hi, One of my sites is reporting a duplicate content and page title error. But it is the same page? And the home page at that. The only difference in the error report is a trailing slash. www.{mysite}.co.uk www.{mysite}.co.uk/ Is this an easy htaccess fix? Many thanks TT
Technical SEO | | TheTub1 -
Dynamic URLs via Refinements
What is the best way to handle large product pages with many different refinement possibilities. Ex. hard drive - 40 gigs - black case etc. All of these refinements add to the length of the url and potentially create crawling issues as the url is to dynamic. I have seen people canonical all refinements and pages to the main cat page, I have seen others no follow certain refinements. Also in the SEOmoz crawling report it tells me that over two parameters is bad. What is the best way to handle this? Thanks
Technical SEO | | Gordian0