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
-
MOZ identifies duplicate titles - one has' www' in the title
MOZ has identified duplicate titles - one has' www' in the title. - we have a few pieces of content where the same thing is happening. Not sure how this has happened. Should we do something about this? Will it cause problems for ranking? | KETAMINE GUIDE FOR DRUG WORKERS - free | Harm reduction informationhttp://substance.org.uk/harm-reduction-information/ketamine-guide-for-drug-workers-free | 13 | 2 |
On-Page Optimization | | Substance-create
| KETAMINE GUIDE FOR DRUG WORKERS - free | Harm reduction informationhttp://www.substance.org.uk/harm-reduction-information/ketamine-guide-for-drug-workers-free | 13 | 4 | 1 - 2 of 20 -
SEO Onpage (where I need to put the H1/2/3)?
Hi everybody, I'm working on my new website, and I have a few questions about the Headers (<h 1="" 2="" 3="">)
On-Page Optimization | | JohnPalmer
please see the attached image, I create a mock-up for you, please tell me which H I have to put on the title.
(** most of the articles will be without sub-titles so...it will be dynamic, but try to take a look on the "sidebar" and "menu link".</h> 6ER0EpK0 -
How to Handle duplicate pages/titles in Wordpress
The wordpress blog causes problems with page titles. If you go to the second page of blog posts it there's a different URL but with the same page title. for example: page 1: site/blog page 2: site/blog/page/2 Each page gets flagged for duplicate page titles. Thanks in advance for your thoughts,
On-Page Optimization | | heymarshall1 -
Is G clever enough to not consider many instances of a category kw on a category page as kw stuffing ?
Hi Say you have a category page on your ecommerce store for a range of a brands products you sell, say brand is called "Cool Surfboards" and is hence the pages target keyword. This page is being populated by name, image and snippet/description for each of the brands different products in the range, such as: "Cool Surfboards HiFive", "Cool Surfboards Rad" , " Cool Surfboards XYZ" etc etc etc Since there are many products in the range the kw is being repeated aprox 20 times. The page is scoring an A grade but obviously failing in regard to keyword stuffing. However if you remove the brand and rename the products by model name only then the sub product specific pages will fail to be optimised for 'brand and model' and it would seem silly to not name the product what it actually is. So the question is, i take it Google is clever enough to ignore kw stuffing in these types of instances since its not actually kw stuffing and hence should leave as is ? Or will G consider it stuffing/over optimised and you should remove the brand name for the individual product names to prevent this ? cheers dan
On-Page Optimization | | Dan-Lawrence0 -
Best Way to Use Date in Title
Hi, I do most of the current copy for our blog which you can find here http://appointedd.com/blog/ I believe having a regular blog structure with a mix of irregular ad hoc posts to go in around these. So, for this blog, I write an article on "Beauty Industry News" every week. Now, I don't want to use the same title for each post, so I've peen butting in the date after each one i.e. "Beauty Industry News - 24/04/13". Is this best practice or is there a better way of naming regular posts? Thanks in advance!
On-Page Optimization | | LeahHutcheon0 -
Description tag/ duplicate content.
Quick question - will Gg deem it duplicate content if I use the description tag text anywhere else in the on-page copy? Thanks, David
On-Page Optimization | | newstd1000 -
Duplicate content
Hi everybody, I am thrown into a SEO project of a website with a duplicate content problem because of a version with and a version without 'www' . The strange thing is that the version with www. has got more than 10 times more Backlings but is not in the organic index. Here are my questions: 1. Should I go on using the "without www" version as the primary resource? 2. Which kind of redirect is best for passing most of the link juice? Thanks in advance, Sebastian
On-Page Optimization | | Naturalmente0 -
Page title
So if we have a main category page on our site (mines an ecommerce site), do we go for more than that main keyword phrase for that category of products, or is it better to just keep it by itself, and not utilize the 65-70 characters available?
On-Page Optimization | | azguy0