| > And that is avoiding the "standard news" syntax of published content via manipulative URLS. Namely, avoiding using /id/date/title-of-post (or something similar) and just using the rootdomain/title-of-post to make it rank higher and seem more important than it is. These pages are not an About page, or Privacy Page, or Terms of Service page. Its manipulation and a shady practice and companies should be penalized for it. As someone who has spent years manipulating ranking I can tell you this has nothing to do with effecting ranking and is most likely about optics/human readability increasing CTR. If you have data that shows urls like "/id/date/title-of-post" rank worse than "rootdomain/title-of-post" (which is nearly impossible to accurately measure due to the nature of how things are _really_ ranked) I'd argue that the rankings are related to the CTR rather than the URL structure. I've explored and tested various URL structures across xxx,xxx domains with effectively equal quality content (using "manipulative" ranking methods and content generation tactics) and there was no measurable difference in ranking. > These pages are not an About page, or Privacy Page, or Terms of Service page. No judgement, but this seems like an odd stance to me. You seem to feel there is some sort of established standard in the structure of website pages/hierarchy, particularly one that should have punishments enforced against those who don't abide... Thankfully there is not, if there were then there would have to be some sort of agreement on these things - who is going to make those decisions? Who are those decisions going to be optimal for? No, to all of that. > As for addressing SEO concerns. There is a lot of frustration out there these days by small sites and companies trying to make their way and Google results can be hit or miss. Major publications like CNET, Forbes, CNN etc are purposefully creating content and cramming it with affiliate links to sell crap to the masses. When a major publication writes about something its not an expert in, one has to start to raise eyebrows and wonder... Its painfully obvious. They get away with it because they are huge brands and can rank for anything, so they are abusing their power. > Sean Kaye says it best here: https://twitter.com/SeanDoesLife/status/1716935563075559630 What? No. The problem isn't the publishers - the problem is the search engine. They built a facade. They _cannot_ manage getting relevant results from relevant sources where there is financial incentive to be ranked higher than someone else. It's patches and rules and filters and manual actions all the way up. They can say otherwise all they want and it's bull. They're just trying to get just good enough results for the vast majority of queries so they can keep selling ads - they lost the battle with SEO/spam a _long_ time ago. You can't/shouldn't penalize the publishers for capitalizing on their "power". You call it an abuse of power - what are they abusing? What are the boundaries? Who set them? Again - expectations on your end, but where do they come from? If you're believing what you're reading at face value re: SEO and think everyone is "playing by the rules" you're in for a rude awakening. That "power" is given to them by Google and their algorithm(s) and search quality team. That "power" is _ultimately_ granted to them by their backlinks and nothing more - they're the billionaires of SEO. They wield the power granted to them by the search engines and they would be foolish not to capitalize on it. On the other side - Google should have done something about all this years ago. But.. how? > When a major publication writes about something its not an expert in, one has to start to raise eyebrows and wonder... Its painfully obvious. You say they're not an expert - but who says you know what's what? And how do you even define what that topic is, let alone who the experts are? How do you assign "expert" status to a website in various topics (that also need to be defined)? Now, we need to do this for _every_ topic - it's not possible. Ok, so we'll choose the important topics and we'll manage who the "experts" are for those topics... This is what they've done. But even then, if you're trying to break into one of these protected topics as a non-behemoth - good luck. Again, not the problem of the publishers that they can throw garbage content at valuable keywords and outrank the small players with much better content. That's Google's fault. It's _their_ job to determine those rankings and they're not good at it. Refer to my earlier statement about it all being a facade. They're just trying to be "ok" enough - there's no way to be _good_ at search-everything. Too much financial incentive to game the results - they'll never stay ahead of the curve without alienating too many "small" publishers in the process. There's just no way that what they're saying publically is what they're actually doing or saying privately about how all this works. _Nobody_ is playing fair here. |
I do not agree. For example, CTR can be increased by modifying the design/text of a button. Or modifying the placement of the button, etc. CTR will not increase or decreased based on the structure of the URL. Hence the word CLICK in "CTR". Most of the time if the URL is listed somewhere, its truncated. Mobile phones trim it down to the domain name.
Plus it's just bad practice and will run into problems eventually. What happens when you have similar titles? Does this increase CTR or increase mistakes?
I still think its a shady practice and can't think of a single reputable major publication that would utilize that structure for Editorial. They should be penalized for a blatant attempt at manipulation. There is no other logical reason for it.
The verge: /features/23931789/seo-search-engine-optimization-experts-google-results.
> If you have data that shows urls like "/id/date/title-of-post" rank worse than "rootdomain/title-of-post" (which is nearly impossible to accurately measure due to the nature of how things are _really_ ranked) I'd argue that the rankings are related to the CTR rather than the URL structure.
Of course I don't have the data, but one has to assume they are doing it for one simple reason. Manipulation in search. It's not for a better user experience. How often are you typing in URLs manually?
> No judgement, but this seems like an odd stance to me. You seem to feel there is some sort of established standard in the structure of website pages/hierarchy, particularly one that should have punishments enforced against those who don't abide... Thankfully there is not, if there were then there would have to be some sort of agreement on these things - who is going to make those decisions? Who are those decisions going to be optimal for?
Generally speaking, yes URL taxonomy has best practices. I don't believe someone is going to create an about us page with /id/date/about-us and thinks that is a good idea, but anything is possible.