Hello, I have a quick question regarding the structure of the CMS with categories, subcategories and tags. I am quite lost to how structuring all of that for a better breadcrumbs url and navigation to boost SEO.
BLUE: Investing would be the main category (Static page)
GREEN: would be the categories (CMS page)
YELLOW: would be the subcategories of one category only (CMS page)
PINK: the articles (CMS page)
Now my main concern is that if I create a CMS collection for each layer: categories, subcategories, articles. The url will be like “/categories/subcategories/articles”,
Ideally I want it to be : “MAIN/investing/stocks/dividend-stocks”
So what is the best pratice when it comes to structuring all of that ? Should I do:
Deep hierarchy: one category > subcategories > articles
OR
flat hierarchy: multiple categories > articles
Webflow isn’t designed to support the flexible semantic URL structure you’re hoping to create, and although you can sort of create it with folders and duplicate collections, the admin complexity tradeoffs are substantial.
On the Webflow end, I lean towards clean structures, data architectures, and admin processes, so in your design that would be something like 3 primary collections - Categories, Subcategories, and Articles.
The only downside is the paths don’t offer that inherent semantic breadcrumb structure, which looks more professional and might offer some SEO benefit.
When I have clients that absolutely need that I’d either use a different platform for the site, or a reverse proxy setup to do the path handling.
Thank you for your answer, so it is not possible with Webflow, that’s fine for now. Could you please tell me if that’s a good structure ?
Investing page would be static, featuring every categories and articles. Then having a CMS template page for every categories and articles, or should I make a change and add subcategories ? Maybe I can play a little bit with folders to add a more customized slug ?
I saw in an older post that you don’t recommend using subcategories but to use tags instead.
I want to do right, and very concerned about how google might like or not my page’s structure and completly screw the SEO because of that.
As I suggested in my post above, I’d personally avoid the folders, and just go with the 3 collections. Huge advantages on maintainability and automation.
The situations where I generally give the “tags instead of subcategories” advice is when someone is trying to build a large 3-level nested ToC. Webflow can only nest collection lists 1 level deep and it has a limit of 5 items in the nested list, so it’s generally a lot of custom code to achieve that.
When I need to build constructions like that I use SA5 Layout.
To achieve your desired URL structure, use custom slugs for each CMS collection level. Set “Investing” as a static main category, then create categories and subcategories with custom slugs like “MAIN/investing/stocks/dividend-stocks.” Ensure articles inherit this hierarchy, improving navigation and SEO. This approach keeps URLs clean and structured.
I see thanks so much for your help. Last question if you don’t mind helping more: would it be better to have a CMS collection “Categories”, or a single CMS collection for each categories to get that custom slug, instead of having /category slug ?
I can see your mind is holding on hard to the de-normalized schema design. Let me see if I can help.
Administration, maintenance and design simplicity are all favored by a normalized schema, so always think “fewer tables is better”.
Because of Webflow’s design limitations, you’ll be tempted to do things like a table for every category, a table for every city, etc so that you can vary the slug. It’s almost never worth it. Soon you’ll have 20 tables that all use the same schema and every design change you want to make takes 20x as much work to implement.
Think of the tradeoff in terms of cost-benefit.
The benefits are…
you get a /category-specific-slug/ in your url.
in the rare situations where it’s useful you can have category-specific fields
The costs are…
An exploding schema… say you want 20 categories, that now requires 20 tables, plus anything linking to those categories needs to be multiplied as well.
20 collection pages to build and keep in sync
20 tables to edit when you need to make a schema change
20 table to wire through the API, and more complex automation work, when you’re automating updates
A higher plan ( Business plan allows 40 total tables )
Basically, it’s just never worth the added cost and pain.
Haha well thank you, I needed to clear every question before I begin to write content, it’s just that after doing a research of my future competitors, their URL structure is clean and has logic, while in webflow those CMS slugs feel like we are not on the track anymore. I don’t know if you understand my english well. You’re right even Google search control says the same thing
I can see your mind is holding on hard to the de-normalized schema design. Let me see if I can help.