Wouldn’t it be great if after publishing a new post on your site, the following could happen … all from your page address:

• Potential visitors to your site could quickly assess what your content is about,
• Search engines would easily discover your page and correctly index your content for better search rankings,
• Every item of content added to your website or blog would have its own unique identifier, making things easier to manage.

Well, with WordPress permalinks you can easily do this!

How To Set Up And Use WordPress Permalinks

Permalinks – What Are They?

Permalinks are the permanent URLs to your individual WordPress posts, categories and other taxonomies (a way to organize things together) like archives.

A permalink is the web address that other people use to link to articles or sections of your site or the links you send in emails pointing readers to a specific post on your blog. Some people also call permalinks “pretty” URLs.

Permalinks make the URLs to each post on your website permanent, hence a permalink.

Why Use Permalinks?

As you have probably heard by now, WordPress is one of the best CMS applications you can use when it comes to SEO.

WordPress is not only well optimized right out of the box, but there are excellent SEO plugins you can use that will help to fine tuned its SEO aspect.

If you focus on the SEO aspect of your site, then you should not ignore the importance of your site’s URLs. Search engines like Google tend to give special consideration to the URL structure of a site.

Permalinks can be used to turn links on your site into “prettier” and more “search engine friendly” URLs. Permalinks are also used to improve the aesthetics, usability, and forward-compatibility of your links.

Now … let’s review why it’s best to configure your permalinks if publishing content in WordPress.

By default, a WordPress installation uses a URL-naming structure for your posts that isn’t search engine friendly and looks like this …

WordPress uses the above link structure to find information inside its database. It doesn’t really mean much to anyone, and it doesn’t help your website with on-site search engine optimization.

As the screenshot image taken directly from Google search results below shows, many site owners haven’t configured their permalinks …

Although Google is still indexing the above sites, they are missing out on extra SEO benefits.

To get the maximum SEO benefit out of using and improve your site’s traffic results, you will want to make sure to set up your permalinks structure to make it more SEO-friendly by displaying relevant keywords in your URL, instead of meaningless characters.

WordPress lets you create a custom URL structure for your published and archived posts, so your pages can go from something that is non-SEO friendly like this …

To something like this …

In this tutorial, you will learn how to set up your WordPress permalinks to display posts using SEO-friendly URLs instead of the default linking structure and help every new post you publish on your site or blog automatically get better indexing in search engines.

Setting Up WordPress Permalinks

Log into your WP dashboard and select Settings > Permalinks …

This brings up the Permalink Settings screen …

As mentioned earlier, by default WordPress web URLs use characters like question marks and numbers to create unique Post Ids and URLs. We want to create a search engine friendly URL instead for our posts. To do this, we will need to specify a different Permalink structure than the one set by default.

Common Settings – Permalinks

In the Common Settings section, select Custom Structure, then add one or more ‘tags’ (see below) to create search engine-friendly URLs …

(Change your permalink settings to create SEO-friendly URLs)

If you use the custom permalink structure shown in the example above, your URL would look something like this:

http://www.mytravelsite.com/river-cruises/ten-favorite-european-river-cruises

Instead of this …

http://www.mytravelsite.com/?p=1445

(Using post name permalinks helps visitors understand what your page is about)

Creating SEO-Friendly Tags In WordPress

“Pretty” permalinks, or search engine-friendly URLs, are created by adding one or more ‘tags’ in the Custom Structure field:

• %year% – The year your post is published, displayed as four digits (e.g. ‘2017’)
• %monthnum% – The month your post is published (e.g. ‘12’)
• %day% – The day the post is published (e.g. ‘13’)
• %hour% – The hour the post is published (e.g. ‘01’)
• %minute% – The minute your post is published (e.g. ‘54’)
• %second% – The exact second your post is published (e.g. ‘59’)
• %post_id% – The unique ID # of the post (e.g. ‘2474’)
• %postname% – A sanitized version of your post title. For example, if the post title is ”It Ain’t Worth Doin’ No More!”, the postname tag will convert this into “it-aint-worth-doin-no-more” (all lower case letters and no punctuation symbols) in the URL. Tip: You can always edit the words in your post titles in the post slug field on the Add/Edit Post/Page screens.
• %category% – A sanitized version of the category name. Nested sub-categories appear as nested directories in the URI (Uniform Resource Identifier – the string of characters used in the URL). Tip: You can edit this text in the category slug field in the New/Edit Category screens.
• %author% – A correctly formatted version of the author name.

Note: When using multiple tags, separate each tag using a ‘/’ (forward slash), or hyphen.

For a quick setup, choose the Custom Structure option, and enter the code below into the ‘Custom Structure’ field …

Or, use one of the following structures:

Tip: If you want search engine friendly URLs for your posts, but don’t want to use a custom permalink structure using tags, then choose Common Settings > Post name instead …

Choosing ‘Post name’ is the same as selecting the ‘Custom Structure’ setting and adding the /%postname%/ tag.

Optional Permalink Settings

Here you can set custom structures for your category and tag URLs.

This changes the ‘base’ category or tag URLs using the following structure:

• domain.com/category_base/category_name
• domain.com/tag_base/tag_name

For example, using “topics” as your category base would make your category links display as ‘http://domain.com/topics/category_name/’.

So, if you make the following change in your permalinks Optional > Category base settings field …

Your ‘category archives’ page URL will go from this …

To something like this …

If you leave the optional settings fields blank the default settings will be used.

Remember to save any changes when finished …

Permalinks – Useful Tips

Sometimes, when you are creating a new post and haven’t given the content a post title yet, the WordPress Autosave feature will save your draft with an assigned numerical permalink (see the example URL in the screenshot below)  …

To fix this and give the post its proper permalink, go to ‘Edit Post’ …

Click on the ‘Edit’ button in the post slug section …

Select all content in the post slug field and delete it …

Click ‘OK’ …

The post slug entry will be replaced with the correct permalink based on your post title …

Here is a quick recap of the process …

Remember to update your post to save the changes …

Your permalink should now reflect the new post title …

Note also that when you change the URL of a published post, you should also create a redirect link …

If you change your post title at a later date (e.g. you think of a more compelling post title or use a headline generator tool to help you come up with some killer post titles), remember to fix the permalink to match the new post title and add a redirection to the new post URL …

Make sure that your permalinks match the titles of your posts and pages to help site visitors find what they are looking for and ensure that search engines will better index your content …

Permalinks – Additional Information

Categories

To get greater benefit from using Permalinks, you will need to set up your WordPress Categories correctly. If you do not have any categories set up, adding a category tag to your permalink forces WordPress to use the default category (uncategorized).

According to WordPress SEO expert Joost de Valk, here are some things to keep in mind if you are wondering whether you should add categories to your permalinks or not:

• If your domain is short and your category name is short and descriptive (e.g. adds a relevant keyword or keyword phrase to your URL), you may want to add categories to your permalink.
• If your post slug (the part of your URL that identifies your post) is too long, it can make your post URL harder to share and reduce the SEO benefit.
• Do you plan to post content under only one category or multiple categories? If you are going to post content under multiple categories, then it’s recommended that you do not use the category tag in your permalink structure.

Despite being the subject of intense debate in WordPress SEO circles, when it comes to category vs no category there really is no perfect permalink structure to use. We recommend choosing the permalink structure you think will suit your needs best and that will make your web address short enough to be attractive and long enough to be descriptive.

We cover WordPress categories in another tutorial.

Avoid Date-Based Permalink Syntax

Another useful tip from Joost de Valk is that unless your website provides news or time-specific information, or there is a special reason why you need to add dates to your post URLs, avoid selecting date-based permalink settings when setting up your blog’s URLs.

(Avoid using permalinks that date your posts)

People are less likely to click on posts that are several years old, even if the content is relevant to what they are searching for.

Changing The Permalink Structure In Blog With Indexed Posts

Normally, it’s best to configure your permalinks when you perform a new WordPress installation. This should be part of your site planning process.

If your website has been running for a while or your site already has many posts indexed in the search engines and you would like to change the permalink structure, make sure that this is something that absolutely needs doing, as making changes to permalinks after your site has already been going for a while could create SEO issues and errors.

301 Redirects

As you’ve seen earlier, some WordPress users (or their web developers) seem to be unaware of the permalinks feature of WordPress.

Maybe you started out using the default WordPress URL structure and now you want to optimize your site better for search engines. Maybe your site was originally set up to display post dates in your URLs and now all of your content is perceived as being outdated and you want to remove the date portion in the URLs.

The best way to change your URL structure without negatively affecting your site’s SEO or rankings is to add ‘301 redirects’ to point links set up using the previous URL syntax to post URLs that use the new structure.

Search engines interpret a code ‘301’ as a link that has permanently relocated. 301 redirection is the most efficient and search engine friendly way to redirect users to new site destinations and avoid ‘404’ (Page not found) errors when following an old link.

To create an effective permalink syntax change and avoid damaging your rankings, sending visitors to broken links, etc. you should add a redirection system before messing with the permalink structure of your site.

You can WP site or blog using a plugin like Simple 301 Redirects, or Redirection, or get a professional to assist you with setting up and redirecting your permalinks correctly to avoid issues and troubleshoot any errors.

(Set up 301 redirections using redirection plugins or use the services of a professional)

Congratulations! Now you know about the built-in system WordPress uses to display SEO-friendly URLs for your posts and improve your search search rankings. For additional information on using Permalinks, see the WordPress codex below:

http://codex.wordpress.org/Using_Permalinks

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