Blog URLs

[atticus7]

I read somewhere - pretty sure is was in Art of SEO - that having dates in the blog permalink URLs was a bad idea.

e.g. /blog/2011/3/my-blog-post/

However, looking at Wordpress best practice, it's also not a good idea to have a URL without a number - it's more resource hungry if you don't , apparently.

e.g. /blog/my-blog-post/

Does anyone have any views on this?

Thanks

Ben

[Gyi]

I use /%category%/%postname%/ haven't had any resource problems yet.

[Tom-Anthony]

Ben - you could start a real fight on this topic!!

I myself am a:

/blog/category/post-name/

or

/blog/post-name/

kind of guy, but it can differ depending on circumstances.

It is important to decide on a convention, then stick to it, and make sure you are serving each post via only a single URL. If you've not checked out 'All in one SEO pack' for Wordpress then certainly take a look at that.

[moldybacon]

Trust me, you won't run into any resource problems unless you plan to serve to the ten's of thousands!

I personal use mysite.com/postname as I find the category of a post dilutes the target keywords.

[atticus7]

Fight, Fight!

Thanks everyone, that's useful to know. Can anyone explain the SEO advantages of removing the year and month from my URLs? And are they significant enough, that I should consider doing it - with the necessary 301 redirects in place?

Ben

[Tom-Anthony]

Hi Ben,

The benefits include:

• having a shorter URL

• moving keywords to earlier positions in the URL

• making the pages appear not so deep in the site structure

Some people have said they don't want the date in the URL to devalue a post in a readers mind, where others have said it is useful information for a reader to know the date of a post.

As with most things SEO, it is a case of 'it depends'.

I would add that the 301 redirects shouldn't take too long to sort out and test, and so don't let that weigh too heavily into your decision; decide what you think is the best decision from the SEO point of view and then worry about if that means you need to do 301 redirects,

-Tom

[atticus7]

Thanks Tom,

That's all very useful stuff, and food for thought.

Cheers

Ben