Hey there, WordPress user! Are you looking for a way to better organize your site‘s content and create a more intuitive browsing experience for your visitors? One great strategy is to include categories and subcategories in your URL structure.
In this comprehensive guide, I‘ll walk you through everything you need to know about implementing category and subcategory permalinks on your WordPress site. We‘ll cover the benefits, the step-by-step setup process, best practices, and more. By the end, you‘ll have all the tools you need to create a logical, SEO-friendly URL structure that enhances your site‘s usability and findability. Let‘s get started!
Understanding WordPress Categories and Subcategories
First, let‘s make sure we‘re on the same page about what categories and subcategories actually are. In WordPress, categories and tags are the two default taxonomies for classifying and grouping related content together. Categories are meant for broad topics, while tags are for more specific keywords.
Here‘s a quick example: Let‘s say you run a recipe blog. You might have categories like "Breakfast," "Lunch," "Dinner," "Desserts," "Vegan," etc. Then for a post about blueberry muffins, you could add tags like "blueberries," "muffins," "baking," "easy recipes," and so on.
Subcategories allow you to further organize your content into a hierarchical structure. Continuing with the recipe site example, under the "Desserts" category you might have subcategories like "Cakes," "Cookies," "Pies," "Ice Cream," etc. This essentially mimics a folder and subfolder structure.
The Problem With Default WordPress URL Structure
By default, WordPress uses a URL structure that isn‘t particularly descriptive or SEO-friendly. Post URLs typically look something like this:
https://example.com/?p=123Or if you have pretty permalinks enabled, they might use this format:
https://example.com/some-post-title/While the latter is better from an SEO perspective because it includes keywords from the post title, it still doesn‘t give us any information about where that piece of content fits into the overall site structure. That‘s where category and subcategory permalinks come in handy.
Benefits of Adding Categories and Subcategories to Your URLs
There are several compelling reasons to include categories and subcategories in your WordPress URLs:
1. Better User Experience
When a user sees a URL like https://example.com/desserts/cakes/chocolate-cake-recipe/, they can immediately tell that they‘re going to a chocolate cake recipe, and that this recipe is part of a larger collection of cake recipes, which is itself part of an even broader desserts section. This context helps set expectations and makes it easier for users to navigate to related content they‘re interested in.
2. Improved SEO
Descriptive category and subcategory names act as valuable keywords that can help search engines better understand what a page is about. A study by Backlinko found that descriptive URLs have a slight ranking advantage over generic ones.
Additionally, since search engines use URL structure as a signal for figuring out site hierarchy, including categories can help create what‘s called a "semantic URL structure." This just means that the URL itself provides meaning and context. In the chocolate cake example above, a search engine can reasonably infer that "desserts" is a top-level category, and that the "chocolate-cake-recipe" post is likely about a dessert recipe involving chocolate cake.
3. Clearer Site Architecture
Putting thought into your categories and subcategories forces you to come up with a sensible content hierarchy and information architecture for your site as a whole. When done well, this can help both users and search engines navigate your site more effectively.
Take a look at the Serious Eats food blog for instance. Their clean category and subcategory URL structure makes it easy to browse recipes by meal type, cuisine, cooking method, and more. You can drill down from broad to specific, like so:
https://www.seriouseats.com/recipes (all recipes)
↳ https://www.seriouseats.com/recipes/topics/meal (recipes by meal)
↳ https://www.seriouseats.com/recipes/topics/meal/breakfast-brunch (breakfast recipes)
↳ https://www.seriouseats.com/recipes/cuisines (recipes by cuisine)
↳ https://www.seriouseats.com/recipes/cuisines/italian (Italian recipes)See how intuitive that is compared to just dumping all recipes together or relying solely on tags?
4. Content Filtering Capabilities
Another great thing about including categories in URLs is that it allows for easy filtering. If a user lands on a specific post but wants to view more content in that same category, they can simply chop off the end of the URL back to the category slug.
For example, if the URL is:
https://example.com/desserts/cakes/chocolate-cake-recipe/Then navigating to https://example.com/desserts/cakes/ would take them to an archive of all cake recipes, while https://example.com/desserts/ would broaden the filter to the parent desserts category.
Convinced that category and subcategory permalinks are worth implementing? Great! Let‘s walk through how to actually set them up on your WordPress site.
How to Configure Pretty Permalinks With Category and Subcategory Support
The first step is to make sure you have pretty permalinks enabled. You can do this under the "Settings > Permalinks" menu in your WordPress dashboard.
Next, select the "Custom Structure" option and enter the following permalink structure:
/%category%/%postname%/This will automatically include the full category path in your URLs.
So if you assign a post to a path like Desserts > Cakes > Chocolate, the resulting URL would be:
https://example.com/desserts/cakes/chocolate/post-name/If you only want to include the immediate category and not the full path, you can use this structure instead:
/%category%/%postname%/Which would give you:
https://example.com/chocolate/post-name/Click the "Save Changes" button and you‘re all set! WordPress will now include categories in the URLs of all posts going forward.
(screenshot of permalink settings UI)
Note: We typically don‘t recommend changing the permalink structure on an established site, as it can break existing links and hurt your search rankings. If you do need to make a change, be sure to redirect all old URLs to the new ones. You can use a plugin like Redirection to automate this process.
Handling Posts With Multiple Categories
But wait, what happens if a post is assigned to multiple categories? Don‘t worry – WordPress will handle this gracefully by choosing one category for the URL.
By default, it will use the category that comes first alphabetically. So for a post assigned to both "Cakes" and "Brownies", the URL would use the "brownies" slug.
If you want more control over which category gets priority for permalinks, you can use a plugin like Yoast SEO or Primary Category. These let you designate a primary category on a per-post basis.
Keep in mind that even if you only assign a post to a subcategory, the full parent category path will still be included. For instance, if you have "Cupcakes" as a subcategory of "Cakes," assigning a post to "Cupcakes" will generate a URL like example.com/cakes/cupcakes/post-name/.
Best Practices for Category-Based Permalink Structures
To get the most benefit out of using categories and subcategories in your URLs, follow these tips:
1. Plan Your Category Hierarchy Carefully
Putting thought into your content categories and how they relate to each other sets a strong foundation for an intuitive, scalable URL structure. Sketch out your category tree before you start adding content.
2. Use Short, Descriptive Category Names
Remember that category names will be used as URL slugs. Aim for short words or phrases that accurately describe what‘s in that category. Avoid special characters, use hyphens instead of underscores, and keep length to a minimum.
3. Don‘t Go Overboard With Subcategories
While subcategories are great for organizing content, you don‘t want to nest them too deeply. Stick to 1-2 levels of subcategories at most to keep your URLs from getting overly long and complex. A good rule of thumb is that any given URL shouldn‘t exceed 5 words or 50-60 characters.
4. Regularly Audit and Adjust As Needed
As your site grows and evolves over time, your category structure may need to change. Perhaps a category ends up being too broad or too narrow, or you realize that you‘re missing an important topic. Schedule periodic audits to assess your content and make adjustments to categories if needed. Use analytics data to see which categories are most popular with visitors.
5. Create Supportive Internal Linking
Including categories in URLs makes it easy to link between posts in the same category using just the category slug. For example, if you‘re writing a new chocolate cake recipe post, you could naturally link to other posts in the cakes category like this:
If you love this chocolate cake, be sure to check out our other
<a href="/desserts/cakes/">delicious cake recipes</a>.This internal linking strategy boosts SEO by funneling link equity to your key category pages, and also encourages visitors to browse deeper into your archives.
6. Use Plugins to Enhance Category Functionality
There are a variety of WordPress plugins that can make working with categories easier and more powerful. Some of my favorites:
- Category Order and Taxonomy Terms Order: Lets you drag and drop to rearrange the order of categories and terms.
- List category posts: Easily display a list of posts from a specific category anywhere on your site using a shortcode.
- Category Sticky Post: Gives you the ability to make certain posts "sticky" within a specific category.
- Permalinks Customizer: Lets you set custom category and tag base slugs, or even remove the category base entirely for shorter URLs.
(table showing plugin features and popularity)
Final Thoughts
Using categories and subcategories in your WordPress URLs is a smart strategy for creating a site that‘s well-organized, easy to navigate, and optimized for search engines. The logical URL structure provides context to both visitors and web crawlers about your content hierarchy.
While there are some potential issues to watch out for, like inadvertently breaking links with permalink changes or going too deep with subcategories, the benefits generally outweigh the risks. Just be sure to follow the best practices laid out above, and use the recommended plugins to streamline your workflow.
Remember, a little planning goes a long way. Invest time upfront into developing a clear category structure that will support your content growth over the long haul. And don‘t be afraid to make adjustments as your site evolves.
By taking control of your URL structure with categories and subcategories, you‘ll create a stronger user experience and a more effective online presence. Your visitors (and your search rankings) will thank you!
Let me know if you have any other questions!
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