As a UX professional, properly building your website architecture is quite important and it’s something beginners don’t even think to pay attention to.
So in this short guide I’m going to break down the ideal URL structure for your website so you can make a nice and tidy, organized website that search engines and generative AI will love.
Permalinks for On-Page SEO
SEO friendly permalinks need to be user friendly, logical, well organized and explain what the page is about. In short a good permalink for SEO has the following:
- Includes your target keyword
- Use hyphens and not underscores
- Be secure by using https (not http – it’s now a ranking factor)
- Use a custom structure depending on the site
- Avoid having extensions like .html at the end
Remember, the “perma” in permalink stands for “permanent” and while you technically can change your structure anytime you want, this is a sure fire way to ruin your hard won SEO as permalinks are supposed to be permanent.
With that out of the way, let’s cover the best permalink structures for blogs, websites and online stores. There are only a handful of options in my opinion to select from:
Post name (also called flat URLs)
example.com/post-name
This is the most optimal structure for an information website and blog with under 1000 blog posts. It’s simple, clean and makes your blog easy to navigate and understand for both search engines and the traffic they send to your website.
However, if your website has some other key focus like an ecommerce website then you should avoid using “post name” as any blog post you create will look like a random page on your website. If there is another focus of your site beyond blog posts, then go with a blog prefix.
Pros:
- Great for content driven websites.
- Clean, simple and easy to understand.
Cons:
- Not ideal for ecommerce websites.
- A poor choice for large publishers with a lot of content.
Blog prefix
example.com/blog/post-name
This structure is essential if your website has some othercore offering beyond blog content. If your an agency, ecommerce website or providing a service and using blogging as a marketing method then you need to add the “blog” prefix to help give a logical, well organized structure to your site.
This prefix will enable your website to be better structured and more understandable by separating the blog content from other pages on your website and the core offering. So with a dedicated blog section for your store, you can link it in your main menu and separate the content as needed for the end visitor.
If you do strictly have an information website and decide to use the blog prefix it’s fine too. But I’ve found “post title” to be better for information websites.
Pros:
- Optimal if your website has specific core service that is separate from blogging.
- Essential for ecommerce websites owners who want to blog.
- A decent choice for content driven websites as well.
Cons:
- Makes content driven websites URL’s needlessly long. Go with post title or a category prefix instead.
Category prefix
example.com/category/post-name
This structure is ideal for massive information websites with over 1000 blog posts where you start to have an unwieldy amount of content and ecommerce websites with a lot product categories.
Something like example.com/career/money/post-title allows you to create content about making money as it relates to a career for example. This is great if you’re covering a wide array of content and need to organize multiple content verticals of your website. For the majority of information websites however, using the post name structure is adequate.
Last, if you’re running an ecommerce website you’ll want to organize everything into product categories like store.com/shirt/product-page and blog posts as store.com/blog/post-title (using the previous structure).
Begin using sub-categories when you start to sell a lot of specific products and need better organization of your website.
Pros:
- Very useful for any large website with a lot of content.
- A necessary choice for large ecommerce websites with multiple product categories and a blog.
Cons:
- If you don’t have a large website, it’s not necessary.
Dates prefix
example.com/month/day/year/post-name
Having dates in your URL is probably the worst structure possible unless you’re running a news website with time sensitive content (then you should use dates). If you’re not managing a news website, never use dates.
Even Neil Patel (whos site uses the blog/post-name structure) is on record saying that when he switched his first blog from dates to “post name” he noticed a much better performance in search traffic.
I experienced the same thing too when I moved my personal blog from blogger which requires the use of dates in the URL to ghost.org which has a post name structure. The performance overall has been much better.
Pros:
- Important, useful and helpful for time sensitive content and news websites.
Cons:
- For all other use cases it’s one of the worst permalink choices.
Helpful Categories
Since your blog posts must be organized into categories (all content management systems use categories), pick helpful and logical categories.
Use keyword focused categories
No, “thoughts” or “blog” or “uncategorized” are not helpful categories. They don’t tell search engines or AI anything about your website.
Since your website should have a broad topical theme, your categories should be sub-topics that make sense. So a personal finance website should have “credit cards” as a category and not “dating advice.”
Pick 4-7 categories max
I use 4 main categories here on DavidUtke.com and then subcategories. Pick 4 logical, keyword focused categories for your website then expand from their as your site grows.
For me I choose to use subcategories as the site grew because it create a nice nestled URL structure.
Permalink Settings FAQ
Should I use “blog” as a directory?
No, the use of a blog as a directory (blog.example.com) is not as effective for SEO as using it as a prefix. The directory function is very helpful if you’re offering a totally different service or product vertical from the core of your website, but a blog for most websites is a marketing tool. Not a different service.
Let’s look at maps.google.com, this is a great structure because Google’s core offering is a search engine. The map function however is totally and completely different and should be a directory.
If all you’re wanting to do is add a blog onto your website for content marketing purposes, adding it as a directory is usually a bad idea as search engines treat directories as mostly separate websites. It’s more beneficial for your SEO if you’re running an ecommerce website or agency to use the blog prefix.
Is having .html in my permalink structure bad?
Not ideal, but generally it’s irrelevant and does not matter.
On the blogger platform you’ll notice all URL’s have an .html at the end. Even some older blogs like Making Sense of Cents that is powered by the WordPress CMS on the back end use .html.
I personally don’t like having this pointless extension because it servers no purpose for the end visitor. But with regards to SEO it won’t hurt or help your website if your posts or pages have .html. For more, watch this video from the official YouTube channel for Google search:
Does the position of keywords in the URL matter?
Yes. Short and tidy URL’s are always the superior choice.
You should always strive to include your keywords in a natural, organic way in your URL. You don’t need to over optimize your URL’s and you should remove excessive words that make your URL needlessly long.
Your URL really does not need to match exactly the title of the blog post if it causes an excessively long URL. My blog post on creating a website has the on page title:
“How To Create a Website – An Easy, Step 1 to Done Tutorial for Beginners”
The URL however for this post is davidutke.com/create-a-website as it contains the focus keyword and general idea of what the blog post is about. Davidutke.com/how-to-create-a-website is fine too.
But having a URL like davidutke.com/how-to-create-a-website-an-easy-step-1-to-done-tutorial-for-beginners is ridiculously long and not user friendly.
In short, the position matters, go with short, clean URLs.
Just make sure to include the main keyword and keep your URL’s user friendly.
Should you change your URL structure?
No, you should not be changing your permalinks unless you really screwed things up.
If your blog or website is new and not getting a lot of traffic then sure, change the URL structure if you made a mistake.
But if your website is using blog/post-title and you just want to change it because you don’t like “blog” in your URL, but you’ve been using it for a year or two and you’re getting 500+ visitors a day then it’s needlessly risky with not a lot of upside benefit.
However if you’re using dates in your URL and are not a news website or for some reason are using the default p=123 permalink structure from WordPress then yes you should change your permalink structure.
If you do decide to change your permalink structure on an established website then make sure to 301 redirect all your old URL’s to the new URL’s as a way to avoid a loss in organic traffic and a loss of rankings.
Should I strip the category base?
No, you should not.
The category prefix is helpful to search engines and generative AI to better understand your site structure.
Stripping the category base makes it look like your categories are just random pages on your site. So while you may not like example.com/category/title, from a technical standpoint, leave it.
Category pages are different from your static pages and blog posts so allow them to have their own unique URL.
Best Permalinks for SEO – Conclusion
Permalinks and site architecture are quite important to your overall SEO strategy. By now you have a strong understanding of how to best structure your content for the best user experience.
Any questions let me know,
-David
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