Can changing categories affect my rankings?

[Upsilon]

Hello Builders!

I have applied for Ezoic and, long story short, Google doesn't like my menu bar. Apparently having a blog, home, and about page is too little for them and they would like me to link to my category pages from the navigation bar.

All fine and dandy but there is one issue: I only have two categories - guides and reviews. They want me to do a better job at categorizing my articles. I could create more categories and do a better job at segmenting the articles but my question is, can this affect my rankings?

Right now, my link structure is domain.com/article-title

So changing my categories and moving posts around categories should not really affect anything I would assume. Thought I'd check first though.

 

[mcfarlanek]

K. I’ll take a stab at this.

My first question is:

why do you think Google wants you to change categories?

You mentioned Google doesn’t like your menu and they want you to change.

Seems like an odd statement is all, I wish Google would just email me and tell me what to do.

Anyways, I think if you change your categories, it could change your pages URL depending on how your permalinks are set up.

Changing your URL on pages that are ranked is not something you want to do. This could impact things like backlinks and internal links.

 

[MWWWconquest]

You're not clear if you had core web vital issues, if ezoic is saying your menu sucks, or if they're saying you don't have enough categories.

Regardless, do not change the URL's. Instead, you can put one article in two categories if they're both relevant. So if an article was just in reviews before, you can put it under home improvement too granted that's a category worth you building out or matches a fair portion of your articles.

That's why there's a canonical tag and yoast does this out of the box.

 

[Ryuzaki]

Right now, my link structure is domain.com/article-title

This is all that matters. If the category isn't in the URL, then nothing changes in the URL. And if the URL doesn't change, nothing changes in regards to SEO.

The only thing you'll see is a re-flowing of your page rank (in a more healthy way) sitewide as you list categories in the header and spread it out among your pages better.

 

[Upsilon]

K. I’ll take a stab at this.

My first question is:

why do you think Google wants you to change categories?

You mentioned Google doesn’t like your menu and they want you to change.

Seems like an odd statement is all, I wish Google would just email me and tell me what to do.

Anyways, I think if you change your categories, it could change your pages URL depending on how your permalinks are set up.

Changing your URL on pages that are ranked is not something you want to do. This could impact things like backlinks and internal links.

I talked to the Ezoic Onboarding Specialist I was assigned. After not getting approved multiple times he sent me a screenshot of my menu bar saying that he received some feedback, that Google doesn't like my menu and would like me to categorize my articles by what I am writing. So maybe he opened a support ticket with them? I think they as an ad network may have this "benefit" but who knows.

And no, my permalinks don't have categories in them. Just wanted to make sure that if I re-categorize my articles nothing bad happens (even though my link structure won't change).

You're not clear if you had core web vital issues, if ezoic is saying your menu sucks, or if they're saying you don't have enough categories.

Regardless, do not change the URL's. Instead, you can put one article in two categories if they're both relevant. So if an article was just in reviews before, you can put it under home improvement too granted that's a category worth you building out or matches a fair portion of your articles.

That's why there's a canonical tag and yoast does this out of the box.

Thanks for the input!

Well, Ezoic says Google gave them feedback my menu sucked basically.

Good to know I can have the article in more categories if they're relevant. I would assume this is what AuthorityHacker reffers to when they talk about soft silos.

This is all that matters. If the category isn't in the URL, then nothing changes in the URL. And if the URL doesn't change, nothing changes in regards to SEO.

The only thing you'll see is a re-flowing of your page rank (in a more healthy way) sitewide as you list categories in the header and spread it out among your pages better.

So I should at least see no changes and in the best case scenario actually do better. Good to know!

 

[Umber]

Changing your category will not impact on ranking as you said since the link structure is domain.com/article-title

Add home, about, blog, review, buying guide, comparison (if you have VS posts, put them in a separate category), and contact us in your menu might help you to approve the site.