Organising Blog categories for SEO and usability.
-
Hello!
I'm a professional photographer and have used categories in an old blog to separate my work. (weddings, portraits, etc.)
I'm starting an new blog and everything was imported, except categories so as i started rewriting them, I noticed the 'personalised URL.
So I was thinking of re-writing my categories based on types of jobs and location.
For example:
*North Wales
-wedding photography
-portrait photography
-commercial photography
*Cheshire
-wedding photography
-portrait photography
-commercial photography
and so on...
Or do you think it's best to just have shoot style categories?
What do you guys think?
Thanks!
-
Here is how Graywolf (Michael Gray) sets up his categories and tags, it may also provide some insight. http://www.wolf-howl.com/blogs/how-to-use-tagging/
-
OK...so what about:
Portrait Photography
- Boudoir
- Family Portraits
- Newborns
Better?
-
I don't care for that category organization myself. It seems a bit spammy. That doesn't mean that it can't work but it really depends on how you present it.
What I would not like to see is www.greatphotography.com/portrait-photography/newborn-photography/ as a URL. I am already on a photography site. It's not helpful to twice more add photography to the category names.
Make your titles as useful and user-friendly as possible. I know this answer is a bit vague but only so much help can be offered with a general question in a Q&A format. There are many factors such as how much content you can have to offer, how much traffic is there for the chosen category names, how competitive is that traffic, etc.
-
I think the new way you have the categories set up is the right way. If you want to really focus on a specific locale, consider creating separate landing pages for each of these locations. The landing pages can feature a map and some images of the area, links to your blog posts featuring weddings you shot in that area, and general information about weddings in that area: popular halls and venues, etc.
If you're going to do this, it's important that each page have GOOD, UNIQUE content about that specific location. Otherwise, you'll create way more problems than you solve.
-
Ok.
What do you think of my current categories then?
| Ioan Said | less than 1 hour ago | Edit |
| at Celynnen Photography |Right.
So right now my categories are:
Commercial
- PR Photography
- Event Photography
- Interior Photography
Portrait Photography
- Boudoir Phootgraphy
- Family Portraits
- Newborn Photography
Etc... Carry on or.....?
Thanks!
-
I understand and agree with your thought process Ioan, but not the end result.
There is a need to balance usability with SEO. Also consider CTR. Ideally everything can come together naturally.
I do recommend optimizing your URLs but keep in mind there are 200+ factors used to determine a page's ranking. I think you are over-optimizing in this regard.
You can build relevancy by using other factors such as header tags, content, backlinks from local sites, etc.
Perhaps others will share a different view point.
-
Right.
So right now my categories are:
Commercial
- PR Photography
- Event Photography
- Interior Photography
Portrait Photography
- Boudoir Phootgraphy
- Family Portraits
- Newborn Photography
Etc... Carry on or.....?
-
I agree with Ryan when it comes to using tags instead of categorys. About your thoughts about subcateorys, I still think the most useful and cosmetic way is to use tags instead of subcategorys. You can see the categorys as the "big headline" and the tags as guidelines below the category.
Good luck with your blog
-
The reason for the "relevancy" for me is more to do with search engines. For example, I have clients in London looking out for photographers in North Wales where they would like to get married.
When I put subcategories, I noticed the category (weddings) and sub-category (north wales) were both mentioned in the custom URL, which I thought made it better in terms of getting to the website rather than when client look at things within the site itself.
-
Does your blog support tags?
If your site is focused on photography you may want to consider category names such as "weddings", "portraits", "commercial", etc. You can use tags for locations such as "Cheshire", "North Wales", etc.
From a user's perspective, if I visited your site and wanted to view wedding photos, I would hope to find a single area of your site which offered your complete selection. I don't think the location of the wedding has much relevancy to the pictures.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Blog.ledsupply.com VERSUS ledsupply.com/blog
Hi All- We had a security issue that started on out blog (ledsupply.com/blog) and moved into our shopping cart, so IT suggested and moved the blog to its own server. This means we had to change the URL structure. It's now blog.ledsupply.com/ instead of ledsupply.com/blog...Is there evidence or opinion on whether this will effect SEO/Traffic (assuming we set-up redirects, etc.)? I remember reading that Google suggests having your BLOG be part of your main domain and not a SUB domain, so I'm very hesitant to switch and also welcome any additional security measure suggestions we could set-up, so that we can keep the preferred domain structure. Thank you so much! -Brooke
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | saultienut0 -
Feefo customer reviews for SEO
Hey Guys, I'm not overly techy, but, I need to advise on Feefo integration. I have been reading and it seems that https://support.feefo.com/support/solutions/articles/8000042161-full-integration-javascript-on-page this is the best integration method. Do you guys have any pointers with using Feefo? Are we still good to use intermediaries like this to handle our reviews for us? Thanks in advance for any help. Kay
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | eLab_London0 -
SEO Checklist for eCommerce?
Over the past week or so, my eCommerce site has experienced a large drop in organic traffic from Google.I have used analytics to determine that the pages that have seen the biggest losses in traffic are product pages. I know there are so many seo checklists/site audit checklists out there recommending different things, but does anyone have a good checklist (or link to a good checklist) that would fit our situation best? Thank you!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Gordian0 -
Seo black hat tricks
I have a competitor in the local area. He registered a new domain name. www.orangecountypatentlawfirm.com. It was created back in 11/10 and updated a few months ago on 11/13. My domain is ocpatentlawyer.com. I put my domain and his domain in the open site explorer. The peculiar thing is that my competitors website mirrors identically to my domain. (see attached image) my competitors website rose through the SERP very fast. I never saw it coming. Anyways, I wanted to know if he was using some type of black hat seo trick to hi jack my domain authority to get his own website to rank higher? Plus, if so, does it hurt my ranking? compare.png
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | jamesjd710 -
How to seo websites on another server
We have partners that want us to build and manage a co-branded white label for them. We will have unique content on the white label, however the white label will be located on our server. I was planning to put it on a subdomain and mask the URL, however was told that google will see through that and not give any credit to the white label. Our partners all have high PR and we are a new company with low PR. We want the white labels to get the credit from the partner websites. Should we do it through url masking or by changing the A Record in the other website to point to our server?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | TravelerVIP0 -
Multinational SEO
Hi all The situation: We have a .com website that is the core of our business over the last 3 years we have built this into a very sucessful brand. Customers are able to purchase products from our website and have it delivered anywhere in the world. As part of the development of our business we want to obviously rank high within serps regardless of what country our potential customer is from. We understand that we will need to translate much of our website to achieve this and that is something that we have in the pipeline. My question is more aimed at the English speaking countries and how we should optimise our website for these. For example: websitename.com.au and websitename.co.uk were initialy setup as 301 redirects to websitename.com, however, we have now set them up as their own domains which display the exact same content as the .com website. So to clarify the content on websitename.com/product1.html is also on websitename.com.au/product1.html and websitename.co.uk/product1.html What would the best way to ensure that our .com.au and .co.uk gain traction within the appropriate country? Is duplicate content still an issue? All our prices are displayed in USD will this go againts? We use US English (with a sprinkle of chinglish) as our websites copy languange should we change spelling for AU and UK? Does anyone have any case studies and or other reports I can read that may help me find the right solution for us. Thanks Danny
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | DannyCarter0 -
Another Guest Blogging Question!
If you had 1 blog with good mozbar stats but hosted in the US and another with lets say 75% of the mozbar stats of the first but hosted in the UK, and your website is hosted in the UK which one would benefit SEO the most?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | activitysuper0 -
What are the bing only SEO tactics?
Recently we realised that our client's SERPs were almost always lower on Bing.com and Bing (canada) when comparing with Google.com and Google.ca We want to know if there's different ranking or blocking factors for Bing and if someone had similar expriences. It would also be appreciated if you have releavent and trusted information on this topic, from blog posts, forums, etc. What are your thoughts on this?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | RichardPicard0