No URL for my blog?!!!

[MissThumann]

I use a website provider for my website. Sadly, although it has an integrated blog, the blog posts title does not get included in the URL. So now, with my limited knowledge of SEO I'm wondering if blogging is still worth it? Any thoughts Greatly appreciated!

[ChrisAshton]

There are definitely some benefits to well-structured URLs but they don't really offer a significant ranking improvement. In fact, John Mueller from Google gave the following response in a Hangout a few months back when asked whether this mattered:

_"I believe that is a very small ranking factor. So it is not something I'd really try to force. And it is not something I’d say it is even worth your effort to restructure your site just so you can get keywords in your URL." _Source

What this means is if you can get them in there, fantastic but I wouldn't completely stop doing what you're doing based on this alone.

Some of the benefits that can be gained from getting the keywords or title in the URL are to do with users and at the end of the day, they are the true aim of SEO so it is worth investigating. I'm not sure what platform you're using but the vast majority do offer some way to fix this, it may even be worth speaking to the platform's support team or a dev to see if it's something they can do, I'd expect it's quite a simple fix.

[KempRugeLawGroup]

It seems like you need to fix the issue with the integrated blog, rather than quit blogging. For a lot of websites (and I would say most websites, but just to be on the safe side) blogging is how they get their backlinks, extra exposure, long-tail keyword traffic, etc. So, I would talk to your website provider first about how to fix this issue, and then go from there.

• Ruben

[KaneJamison]

Hi there,

This isn't bad enough to completely stop your efforts, however it makes me more concerned about your website platform. Which service are you using? Have you verified with their support team that you can't put the blog post title in the URL or change it manually?

[MissThumann]

I did ask him, this is what he said:

Ours doesn’t add the title into the URL.   They may change that at some point in the future but currently it doesn’t .

One suggestion would be to geographically tag your posts by mentioning Dallas or whichever city you’re hoping people find you in.    You would want that not only in the page title (which is the blog post title) and in the body.   Similar to the way regular product pages are set up.   Your key words should be in the page title, short title (also blog post title in this case) and in the content.

--

I don't know why they can't change it?

[MissThumann]

Following up on my question - would it be ok for me to start another blog for my site, along side the one I already have.

The first is integrated, then the second i'd use a blogging platform. But I need to know - would this hurt my seo in any way?

Many thanks!

[KaneJamison]

Yes - you'll want to keep your blog on the same subdomain for SEO purposes.

• www.domain.com/blog/ is great.
• blog.domain.com is less great.
• www.differrentdomain.com is the worst option.

What is the reason for using this website platform again? Is there anything stopping you from using a different website software, such as Wordpress or Squarespace? Unless there's something keeping you stuck to that software (long term contract, or shopping cart/order functionality, or other things that their software does that you can't easily replace), then I'd generally suggest to look into alternatives that have better support for SEO & other digital marketing concerns.

Yes, that would require some website design effort as well as migrating content. It may even mean you'd have to change URLs, which can also create SEO headaches. So it may not be worth it all, just to fix the URL. But - it's really silly that they don't offer this, and their suggestions about tagging make it appear that they're not very savvy with SEO concerns that affect business owners.

That's kind of a lengthy non-answer, so I apologize. If you want to post specific URLs or website software here, that context would be helpful in helping you make a decision.