/%category%/%postname%/ Permalink structure

[UnderRugSwept]

Mostly everyone seems to agree that /%category%/%postname%/ is the best blog structure.

I'm thinking of changing my structure to that because now it's structured by date which is bad. But almost all of my posts are assigned to more than one category. Won't this create duplicate pages?

[UnderRugSwept]

http://www.stadriemblems.com/

Thanks!

[mad2k]

Did you find any reason of site declining?

Send me an url, I will take a look

[UnderRugSwept]

Yes, our positions are gradually declining, and I'm trying everything I can, no matter how seemingly small, until I can figure out why.

[mad2k]

Hi again

I think that depends on what is the position of your site now. If it's good there is no pressure to do changes in other case you can take a risk. In my opinion good structure of content help in SEO an if I were in your situation i would take a risk of change.

[UnderRugSwept]

Another question is which would be worse for SEO: leaving it the way it is, categorized by month and date, or changing the whole structure when I have dozens of posts?

[UnderRugSwept]

Thanks for the input. The reason I'm worried about duplicate pages is because what i temporarily switched everything to category/postname, I could access pages many different ways.

category1/postname/page

category2/postname/page

anothercategory/postname/page

Were all the same page. Duplicate content?

[NakulGoyal]

I agree with Marek. However, there's value in having the Category in there specially if your categories are keyword rich. Don't worry about duplicate pages. One post will only have one default category in the Slug (Most of the times, its the 1st one you selected in Wordpress). I also sometimes like to use /%category%/%postname%.html or /%category%/%postname%.php which gives the effect of pages under a folder, vs folder inside a folder. Just my 2c.

[mad2k]

Hi Marisa,

I'm using /%postname% and in my opinion it is a best structure ... but ... in that kind of structure is important to care about slug and to prevent creation of duplicated titles.

/the-best-solution  is a good slug

//the-best-solution-2  is not a good slug

I don't have duplicated pages cos WordPress has mechanism which check the slug in real time when you creating a post.

I think that  /%postname% is the most friendly link structure.