Moz Q&A is closed.
After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.
Recommendations on the URL Structure When Posting Blogs
-
Sites are adopting different URL structures for posting blogs (examples below).
Quicksprout ( www.domain.com/dateposted/blogposttitle)
Moz (www.domain.com/blog/blogposttitle)
SEO Book (www.domain.com/blogposttitle)
What do you recommend?
-
The solution is simple. Remember usability is key to the user experience. If you have a blog then place the blog/ in the URL. Think of an e-commerce website. You want to categorize items correctly. You don't want customers finding fridges in the microwaves category
-
Hi again
Utilize the /blog/ in the URL. Otherwise, you're creating a flat architecture to your site. Always include /blog/ in your URL if it is in fact a blog piece of content.
-
Thanks for your opinion Andrew. Wondering how much of an impact it makes if you dont utilize the "blog" in the URL structure and add in the Title directly (www.domain.com/title) especially when going after competitive keywords.Logically it would make more sense to have a structure like this (www.domain.com/blog/category/title)
-
Good point Patrick.
-
The first question to answer is if the site itself is a blog... or if it's a website that also has a blog. If it's the latter and the blog lives at www.yoursite.com/blog/, then the structure should obviously always include the /blog/.
Responding to your 3 examples in order:
Quicksprout's structure is a little odd in that their blog lives at /blog/, but the individual posts do not. A bit strange from both a human usability and bot crawling hierarchy standpoint. Other than that, including the date is helpful in terms of telling the user/bots how current the post is and differentiating it from similarly named posts on the same blog. That said, it pushes the title/topic keywords further out in the URL.
Moz uses /blog/, which again makes the most sense, but they've foregone including the date. This, however, lets them get the topic/title keywords to appear earlier in the URL.
SEO Book, like Quicksprout, oddly strips out the /blog/ directory from the URL. Other than that, their strategy is the same as Moz.
The winner here, in our opinion, seems to be Moz. The /blog/ remains when you're on individual posts which makes sense to both humans and bots. They don't include the date, but historically that's not been critical.
-
Hi there
I have always been a fan of the /blog/blog-title lay out, but it's really up to you on how you want to structure your URL. The reason I like this structure is because if it's an older post, but still valid, then users won't automatically disregard it because of the date in the URL. But really, both ways have their benefits.
Here are some reasons:
Reasons to include dates Reasons not to include dates Dates in URLs Q+A
Hope this helps! Good luck!
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 post generating irrelevant traffic. What should I do with it?
I have a blog post that has been generating more than 75% of my website's traffic month over month.-averaging about 1000 views a month. Awesome that so many people are finding and benefiting from this post, however it is really skewing my traffic. I have an 87% bounce rate, and I'm only ranking in terms related to this post as opposed to industry related terms. I'm not sure what to do with this blog post. I want to be able to better evaluate my website's performance and be sure I'm targeting the right audience in order to gain more leads. Would a 'noindex' or 'nofollow' be appropriate here? Thanks!
Content Development | | Ali_DeLeg0 -
Shopify Blog vs Wordpress
We are moving our Ecommerce site to Shopify. Currently we run our blog on Wordpress and I'm wondering if anyone has an opinion on using the Shopify blog vs Wordpress?
Content Development | | Glaze0 -
Where to post article?
What Website could we submit the article and be posted? I work on articles and summit them to the site like articlecity, cbs baltimore but they have never get posted. Is that mean my articles aren't good enough?
Content Development | | mongor0 -
Blog Posts: 1 link per 125 words?
I've seen this "1 link per 125 words" for blog posts suggestion pop up a variety of places. I wanted to know if that's "correct" or a best practice? In my posts, I generally write between 800 to 1200 words with about 4 to 6 links in the body of the post. However, (and this may be a problem) I add about 13 links in my closing paragraph, "if you have any legal questions, etc etc, click here for your "Tampa personal injury attorney, Clearwater Personal Injury Attorney, etc etc for all the areas we practice in related to that blog post." Should I stop doing that? Does that come off as spammy? (The blog is hosted on our site, if that matters for this question at all). Thanks, Ruben
Content Development | | KempRugeLawGroup1 -
How long should a quality blog post be?
How long should a "quality" blog post be? General advice seems to be that a 300 word post just won't cut it, but advice on the optimum length is vague. I appreciate that all posts are different but is there a rule of thumb, is 1000 words good and 1500 too long...or should they are all aim to be 2000 words? Also with regards to pictures in blogs, can they just be taken from the web or are there sites that I should be using to source the pictures? Thanks
Content Development | | Studio330 -
How many categories should you have within a blog / Wordpress Site for SEO?
Hi Guys I am just wondering whether or not for SEO purposes it is better to have a small number of categories for your blog posts to fit into as opposed to numerous ones. The reason I ask is that I have one site which is fairly new to the search engines - 8 months old which has 7 general categories within the blog for instance "rail contractors", "railway construction" "airport construction" etc I have another site which is 10 years old which has built up 25 different types of categories for instance brand design, brand development, brand management (i guess you could put all these under 1 category "branding"? We've been writing lots of press for both sites... yet the younger site is getting more coverage on Google page 1. Would this be because the blogs / press are more concentrated under a specific category as opposed to being spread thinly throughout the site? Any help would be appreciated. Debs 🙂
Content Development | | lethalmarketing0 -
Onsite Blogging Vs Guest Blogging
Hey all! I have a limited amount of time allocated to writing instructional blog posts for my company. When I complete an article I can do whatever I want with it: pitch it as a guest post on an industry blog, or post it on my company's onsite blog. I know there's not a magical solution regarding the percentage of time one should devote to guest blogging v. focusing on the company blog, but I figured I'd throw the conundrum out to the Mozzers anyway. In your opinion, how many of your writing resources should be devoted to guest posts, and how many should be devoted to maintaining the onsite blog? What if our onsite blog isn't currently receiving a lot of traffic? Thanks! Meg
Content Development | | ClarityVentures1 -
How do blogs affect seo?
Could you help me understand how blogs affect seo and how this works specifically when a blog is located within a site? Thank you!
Content Development | | derrickkuhn0