Order of categories and subcategories in URLs

It’s important to put some thought into your URL structure, particularly when you’re starting a new website. If you make sure your URL structure is clear and focused right from the beginning, you won’t have to face the huge task of changing and redirecting all your URLs later on. But, of course, sometimes you need to revise your site’s taxonomy, and changing things is inevitable.

You’ll be faced with many choices when you’re revising your site, and you probably hope there’s one clear-cut way to approach things. Unfortunately, often that’s not the case. But of course, we can try to help by clearing some things up. So let’s get to this week’s question!

Matt Markley emailed us this question:

We are revising our site’s taxonomy. Does the order of categories and subcategories in the URL have an impact on SEO? The category keyword is more important to rank than the subcategory keyword.

Watch the video or read the transcript for the answer!

The SEO impact of the order of categories and subcategories in URLs

“Well, yes it matters. Mostly because, if you’re going to change the order, the links matter. And if the links on your site change, so you need to redirect them, you might lose some rankings because of that.

Other than that, no they don’t really matter. The question is: do you truly need the category and the subcategory in your permalinks? Or could you actually go with shorter permalinks and would that be better? That’s something that you have to ask yourself, not a question I can answer for you. Good luck.”

Read more: The perfect WordPress SEO permalink structure »

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