Hi all, I have a few questions regarding Discourse URLs. QUESTION 1: Why are random letters and numbers added within URLs? How can we create URLs without these additional subfolders? From my SEO understanding, extra URL subfolders push the content further away from the root domain, which dilutes…

Answer1: The Numbers are the topic id and then followed by the post id Answer2 : activating the /admin/site_settings/category/all_results?filter=fixed_category_positions will allow you to re-arrange categories

Thank you. I’ve managed to arrange the categories within the forum, however then once a topic is created within a category, the URL structure does not reflect the categorisation (it doesn’t sit within the same URL folder structure). Do you know a way to ensure it sits within this?

Categories as displayed as https://meta.discourse.org/c/support/6 where support has an id of 6 and can also be referenced as https://meta.discourse.org/c/6 topics are displayed as https://meta.discourse.org/t/optimising-discourse-urls/204974/ where the topic id is 204974 and can also be reference…

[image] Katherine: the URL structure does not reflect the categorisation (it doesn’t sit within the same URL folder structure). Do you know a way to ensure it sits within this? That is not possible at the moment. All we do is set the category as breadcrumbs in the page metadata: [image]

And there is another point: structure of URL has nothing to do with SEO. Only the content in that URL matters. SEO includes a lot of pure folklore that supports only selling pitches of SEO consults :wink:

[image] Katherine: From my SEO understanding, extra URL subfolders push the content further away from the root domain, which dilutes the authority in Google’s eyes. I don’t think that matters any more. It would be far more damaging to traffic if the URL structure were changed at this point. …

Optimising Discourse URLs

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Falco (Falco) October 1, 2021, 4:07pm 5

That is not possible at the moment. All we do is set the category as breadcrumbs in the page metadata:

Topic		Replies	Views
Topic URL to include its Category Support	9	1063	March 7, 2025
Changing link letter to word e.g:- /t/ to /name of the category & modify or remove /c/ Support	3	1410	November 23, 2015
Category name in URL Feature	3	1297	May 22, 2015
URL Changes for Topic Pages Support seo	1	620	March 23, 2020
Is it possible to change the url structure? Support	1	851	October 5, 2019

Optimising Discourse URLs

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