/%category%/%postname%/ OR /%postname%/ What Is Going To Rank Better?

[Christian Fox]

/%category%/%postname%/ OR /%postname%/ (wp permalinks)

So it would be http://kwloadeddomainname.com/kwcategory/kwslug/
or http://kwloadeddomainname.com/kwslug/

I would think the first would be better, but looking for someone who KNOWS from experience. I HATE making these types of mistakes and having to redirect anything. I have found some debate about this looking for some confirmation.

Thanks in advance...

[Shannon Herod]

%postname% and that is it.

The more you have in the URL the less likely it will rank for the specific keywords you're targeting. That has been what I have found. And I have tested it many times.

Talk soon,

Shannon Herod

[Christian Fox]

Even if it is, www.bluewidgets.com/blue-widgets/blue-widgets/
vs www.bluewidgets.com/blue-widgets/

Just want to clarify

I know that
www.bluewidgets.com/red-widgets/blue-widgets/
won't rank as well as
www.bluewidgets.com/blue-widgets/

Have you tested that?

Am I correct in assuming I can have matching category and post names?

[Exire]

I suppose if you can manage a matching category and post name it might work out. However, the less "noise" the search engines have to sift through to find out what your post is about the better so /%postname%/ is probably best. That way the search engine only has the domain name (which it can easily figure out) and the actual post name itself to deal with.

[Christian Fox]

Originally Posted by Exire

I suppose if you can manage a matching category and post name it might work out. However, the less "noise" the search engines have to sift through to find out what your post is about the better so /%postname%/ is probably best. That way the search engine only has the domain name (which it can easily figure out) and the actual post name itself to deal with.

I am hoping the consensus is postname as that is how I have set up all of my sites. I would hate to think I made a mistake that could be costing me serp results.

[Sheryl Polomka]

I haven't tested to see what ranks better, personally though I just use the postname

[Christian Fox]

Originally Posted by tonykoay

Shannon,

How about the title effect the ranking? as our title will turn to url once we post it.

You can edit the permalink separate from the post title. I keep the main KW in my PL but not the entire title. The less irrelevant text in the permalink the better...

Example if your title is "Beginning Dog Training For People With Three Arms"
you can make your permalink simply
www.yourdomain.com/beginning-dog-training/

[anwar001]

If you are not going to have multiple categories on your site then option 2 should be better IMO. If there are different categories, with many posts for each category, option 1 should be better. However, I haven't tested it out.

[Tom Goodwin]

Originally Posted by anwar001

If you are not going to have multiple categories on your site then option 2 should be better IMO. If there are different categories, with many posts for each category, option 1 should be better. However, I haven't tested it out.

*cough* last post date *cough* 9/3/09

[Steve Crooks]

I wouldn't sweat about it to be honest Christian. I have seen no discernible difference in ranking from trying both permalinks on various sites.

One small thing to consider though is that by just having %postname% you need to be careful that you don't duplicate URLs by having the same post title for different posts. It probably won't ever be an issue for a small site but if your site was to become very large it might be an issue eventually.

[peter.h]

not tested this at all but...

I think it's unlikely that google is checking the ratio of keyword to rest of words in the url. On page yes, but not in the url. Even if they were another 2-3 words for the category won't effect the ratio considerably.

What they are likely just checking (and that is what the INURL thingy does) is whether keyword does exist in the url. That is obviously the single most important thing.

So if that is true then yes the category is much, much better than just the postname, because you will obviously setup the categories as the main keywords for your site and they will then automatically be contained in ALL urls!

So for me which ever way you spin it %category% is better........ but not tested

[Trent Brownrigg]

Even though the original post was 7 months ago and I am sure you have long since figured this out, I guess someone felt it needed resurrected, so I will put my 2cents in and say to go with just %postname%

That's how I have been doing all my new blogs lately.

[duia]

It is an unarguable fact thay the more you have in the URL the less likely it will rank for the specific keywords you're targeting.So, just using /%postname%/ is a wiser choice if you want to make your sites friendly with Google.

[thetradeking]

I had my permalinks set to /%category%/%postname% and the site was on page 1. I read a book recently which was showing to use just /%postname%, changed it and now the site is no where on google. have changed it back but dont know when it will rank back again?

[designerjack]

Originally Posted by Christian Fox

/%category%/%postname%/ OR /%postname%/ (wp permalinks)

So it would be http://kwloadeddomainname.com/kwcategory/kwslug/
or http://kwloadeddomainname.com/kwslug/

I would think the first would be better, but looking for someone who KNOWS from experience. I HATE making these types of mistakes and having to redirect anything. I have found some debate about this looking for some confirmation.

Thanks in advance...

Depends... Unique or AutoBlog?

If it's unique content, use category and post title

[octars]

For SEO purpose its better use /%category%/%postname%/

but for performance:

> %postname% A sanitized version of the title of the post (post slug field on Edit Post/Page panel). So “This Is A Great Post!” becomes this-is-a-great-post in the URI (see Using only %postname%). Starting Permalinks with %postname% is strongly not recommended for performance reasons..

> %category% A sanitized version of the category name (category slug field on New/Edit Category panel). Nested sub-categories appear as nested directories in the URI. Starting Permalinks with %category% is strongly not recommended for performance reasons.

So For performance its better to use:

/%year%/%monthnum%/%postname%/

or just:

/%year%/%postname%/

For performance reasons, it is not a good idea to start your permalink structure with the category, tag, author, or postname fields. The reason is that these are text fields, and using them at the beginning of your permalink structure it takes more time for WordPress to distinguish your Post URLs from Page URLs (which always use the text "page slug" as the URL), and to compensate, WordPress stores a lot of extra information in its database (so much that sites with lots of Pages have experienced difficulties). So, it is best for the first structure tag to be a numeric one

Source: Using Permalinks « WordPress Codex