Best Permalinks for SEO - Custom structure vs Postname

[RawkingOut]

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

[brightvessel]

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.

[RawkingOut]

Would love to hear what structure you use Judd

Thanks,

RO

[RawkingOut]

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

[brightvessel]

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?

[RawkingOut]

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

[brightvessel]

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."

[RawkingOut]

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.

https://youtu.be/9s8aYsSNtjk

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!

[brightvessel]

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.