Comments on: Are Category Keywords in the URL a Significant Ranking Signal Now?

By: David Saunders

David Saunders — Mon, 09 Jan 2012 05:13:32 +0000

SEOMOZ does play the category with the keyword on the URL as a significant card for ranking well.

Although that is not a critical factor it is still there on the list which means it must be important.

By: Tadeusz Szewczyk

Tadeusz Szewczyk — Fri, 06 Jan 2012 10:47:58 +0000

Michael: Yeah, I’ll be watching it category keywords in URLs in the near future. It may be just a glitch but it also may mean a major change. That’s why I asked :-)

Tom: I don’t understand. What are they phasing out?

Ian: Good point. Indeed I haven’t, I have neglected this obvious ranking signal because I didn’t assume people would tweet about “content strategy” where there is none mentioned in the headline.

Do you suggest that the sheer amount of tweets etc, matters?

By: Ian

Ian — Thu, 05 Jan 2012 20:01:36 +0000

Have you looked at social factors? The Six Revisions article has over 700 retweets, versus about 60 for you. I’ve been researching this too and volume of likes/tweets, plus response to those likes and tweets, seems to be a bigger and bigger ranking factor.

By: Tom Worrall

Tom Worrall — Thu, 05 Jan 2012 11:26:35 +0000

They are definitely phasing it out. It’s too easy to manipulate, which isn’t the google thing.

By: Michael Martin

Michael Martin — Mon, 02 Jan 2012 16:43:34 +0000

This is an interesting development. I’d always assumed what you mentioned there, that the URL was largely irrelevant other than the actual domain (And if you had a million & parameters in it).

On my site, the category is a part of the URL, and I’ve largely regretted that for the past few years because the vast majority of my posts go into just one or two categories, so it seemed pointless.

If this does prove to be true though, it would be an interesting consideration to make when choosing WordPress permalinks.