One of the simplest and most effective Search Engine Optimization (SEO) techniques you could implement when launching your WordPress blog is setting the correct ‘pretty’ permalink structure for your site. Pretty permalinks are very important to help your blog’s content to be more understandable and accessible by both your visitors and search engines than URLs that are dynamically created by PHP that end up with something like this: www.yourdomain.com/?p=1
Below, I will show you the best permalink structure to use for SEO and how to do it.
What are Permalinks?
Permalinks as WordPress.org defines it:
…are the permanent URLs to your individual weblog posts, as well as categories and other lists of weblog postings. A permalink is what another weblogger will use to link to your article (or section), or how you might send a link to your story in an e-mail message. The URL to each post should be permanent, and never change — hence permalink.
So in, http://www.yourdomain.com/first-blog-post, ‘first-blog-post’ would be a pretty permalink and can be customized within your WordPress dashboard to suit your preferences.
How To Setup Your Permalinks
To setup pretty permalinks for your WordPress blog you need to access Settings in your WordPress dashboard, then select Permalinks. You should see some options like below:
Select the custom structure field and enter, /%postname%/ and click Save Changes. This will create a permalink structure of www.yourdomain.com/postname/ which is the most effective URL structure for your blog.
Also, depending on the needs of your site and if you would like more structure to your URLs and posts, you could use /%category%/%postname%/ which would display the name of the category where your post is filed as well. So it really can be customized however you like. To see a full list of structure tags that can be used, please visit the WordPress Codex Here.
SEO Basics When Using & Choosing Your Permalinks
Generally, I always advice my clients that when choosing their domain names, shorter URLs are better both for the human mind that tries to remember them as well as being simpler for search engines. The same goes for the URLs used when you create new posts for your blog.
For example, if the title of one of your blog posts is “How To Make A Million Dollars By Doing Absolutely Nothing For A Year,” it would best suit you if you customize your post ‘slug’ (as in the URL for your post) to something shorter and simpler. Without any customization, WordPress will automatically assign a post slug to your article as www.yourdomain.com/how-to-make-a-million-dollars-by-doing-absolutely-nothing-for-a-year, this is not the most efficient permalink and basically does not get to the point for the search engines.
A more appropriate post slug would be something like www.yourdomain.com/how-to-make-a-million-dollars which provides less unnecessary information, which will in turn make it easier for you to be found through search engines.
Customizing your ‘slug’
Once you start typing the title of your new post, your article will be automatically assigned a post slug and you will see an option appear below the title field to edit your post permalink. To customize your link simply click edit and change it to whatever you like.
Basically, customizing pretty permalinks allow you to have more keyword rich URLs and gives you the added SEO benefit if other sites use those URLs to link back to your site.
Safely Migrating Your Permalink Structure
If you’ve already started publishing to your WordPress blog and have decided to change your entire permalink structure at a later stage, you will not be able to safely make the change using the regular settings alone since all links to your posts would be broken and return a ’404 page not found’ response to your visitors. You will also lose any pagerank that your posts may have gained since the URLs would no longer be valid.
Thankfully, there is a neat plugin that allows you to successfully make the structure change without any disasters by generating a ’301 permanent redirect’ for your post pages. This simply tells search engines and your visitors’ browsers that the pages have moved to a new URL and they would be seamlessly redirected. All pagerank and links would be transferred.
The plugin can be downloaded here: Permalink Migration – After you’ve installed and activated the plugin, you may then go ahead to change your permalink structure in the regular WordPress dashboard settings.
Conclusion
Using pretty permalinks is absolutely imperative if you want to become the authority within your niche and generate as much search engine traffic as you possibly can.
If you’re thinking of changing your permalink structure or have done so in the past please let us know by leaving a comment. We would love to hear from you and also know how your search engine traffic improved since making that change.
some of my most popular posts on my blog have benefited from a perfect permalink structure
.-= Jamaipanese´s last blog ..Limited Edition Gundam Phone from Softbank =-.
That’s great Kirk. Keep it up!
Have you been targeting specific keywords?
Fantastic info… especially about that plug-in. It’s great to know that mature blogs don’t have to do that process manually, that would really be a pain!
Thanks for reading Natalia.
Glad it helped
Thanks for sharing this Robb, I already did this things since I used wordpress last 28th of may this year. I was on it because I used to do guest blogging on some wordpress blogs and it’s fully customizable.
Thanks for sharing it. It serves as a reminders for me.
- Felix Albutra
.-= Felix Albutra @ Blogging Access´s last blog ..10 Things to Do After Creating Your Blogger Blog =-.
Thanks for taking the time to comment Felix
Very useful article Robyn. For beginners (at least new blogs), it is recommended to set the permalink structure to “postnames” right from the beginning and targeting keywords in the slugs is a must. From a real life experience, it is sometimes difficult to manage all links changes and this is where a special treatment for 404 pages must be made. Think custom 404 pages.
.-= Sachin @ Web Design Mauritius´s last blog ..Custom Search: make the most out of Google Maps with optimized geolocation results =-.
That’s a very good point Sachin.
A customized 404 error page that is specially designed to direct visitors to interesting topics is very important. Taking a deep look at traffic analysis reports will actually reveal the number of visitors who hit 404 pages on our sites. So we should also pay attention here.
Thanks for sharing Sachin
I disagree about the html thing – URLs are a lot friendlier without it (more user-friendly) – most new sites and web apps use the extensionless convention. But I suppose it’s a matter of preference.
.-= limo hire Gold Coast´s last blog ..Introducing "The Bride’s Day" =-.
Thanks for sharing this , yep its another advantage of adding post id to permalinks
.-= sun@limo hire Gold Coast´s last blog ..Introducing "The Bride’s Day" =-.
Thanks for commenting
It surprises me when the permalink structure is not setup when I visit a blog. I do not use category in my permalink as often times I place my blog entry into a few different categories.
.-= Colleen@Kennewick Real Estate´s last blog ..Memorial Day Events Around the Mid Columbia =-.
Hey Colleen,
Thanks for commenting.
There are still many bloggers out there who are just not aware of the benefits of using proper permalinks.
If you decided to use the category tag for your permalinks, the first category chosen would be used for the post slug.
.-= Sam´s last blog ..12 Easy Ideas For Making Money Online Through Blogging =-.
One of the simplest and most effective Search Engine Optimization (SEO) techniques you could implement when launching your WordPress blog is setting the correct ‘pretty’ permalink structure for your site.
I couldn’t agree more, which is why it always cracks me up to no end when I visit a “SEO specialists” bog and find the default permalink…..literally cracks me up, I’ll sit here all alone and LOL at the sadness.
.-= Dennis Edell @ Direct Sales Marketing´s last blog ..The Future of DEDC – Part 2 – This is Part 1 Simplified =-.
Hey Dennis,
I agree with that one. How can someone claim to be an SEO expert and make such simple mistakes? There are many persons out there who really devalue words like ‘expert’ or ‘guru.’ One tends to be wary whenever bloggers make ‘expert’ claims.
.-= Sam´s last blog ..12 Easy Ideas For Making Money Online Through Blogging =-.
Sam, indeed.
It really hurts everyone else that might legitimately be expert at something.
For the longest time, I did not want to use the word’s “coach” or “mentor” or any of that behind my name. Not because I was full of crap, but the automatic perception of being full of crap nowadays.
One day a young lady told me she was tired of being ignored for being young and asked me if I would be her coach…that was my ticket “in”. I even went so far as to ask her if I could drop her name if anyone questioned my “status”.
She thought the request was a little odd, but it was cool. lol
A warning to those putting *category* in the permalink. If you’re the antsy type (like me) always changing the category names and such, you will do a lot more harm then good.
I suppose that plugin would help, but still…
.-= Dennis Edell @ Direct Sales Marketing´s last blog ..WTH? To Say I’m Perplexed Would be an Understatement to Say the Least =-.
I think having a good permalink strucutre is quite important for SEO but I am always confused on one thing: Should I have the category included in my permalinks or should I not. DUh!!!
.-= Shiva@Web Magazine´s last blog ..25 Best Books for WordPress Bloggers =-.
Hey Shiva,
Thanks for sharing. I think the simplest way to go is to use the postname.with customized slugs. These tend to work very well
.-= Sam´s last blog ..12 Easy Ideas For Making Money Online Through Blogging =-.
As far as the permalink structure is concerned I’ve always gone with the categories plus the post name, I feel like you gotta have the categories in there for simply organization, and plus it adds another element in terms of SEO, and I’ve always felt that its better overall. But that’s just my take on it.
Till then,
Jean
Thanks buddy……… very helpful info