Wouldn’t it be great if you could simply add a new post to your website, and the following would then happen … all from your page address:

• Site visitors could tell what the content is about,
• Search engines would be able to discover your pages faster,
• Every single piece of content on your site would have its own unique identifier, making your site easier to manage.

Well, with WordPress permalinks you can easily do this!

How To Set Up And Use WordPress Permalinks

Permalinks – Definition

A permalink is the permanent URL to an individual post, category, or other taxonomy (a way to organize things together) like archives.

A permalink is the URL that others will use to link to posts or sections of your site or the links you send in emails pointing to a particular post on your blog. Permalinks are also referred to as “pretty” URLs.

Permalinks make the URL pointing to each post on your blog permanent, hence a permalink.

Permalinks – Why Use Them?

As you are probably aware, WordPress is one of the best CMS tools you can use when it comes to SEO.

WordPress is not only great for SEO out of the box, but there are SEO plugins you can use that can help to finetune its SEO aspect.

If you focus on the SEO aspect of your website, then you should not ignore the importance of your URLs. Search engines like Google place considerable weight on the structure of URLs when indexing its pages.

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

Now … let’s see the reason why it’s best to set up permalinks in WordPress.

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

The above link structure is used by WordPress to find information inside its database. It doesn’t really mean anything to either search engines or visitors, and it doesn’t help your website with on-site SEO.

As the screenshot image from Google search listings below shows, many WordPress users are still using out-of-the-box permalink settings when publishing content online …

Although these sites are still getting their content indexed on search engines, the owners of these sites are potentially missing out on extra SEO benefits.

To get more SEO benefit out of using WordPress and improve your site’s traffic results, you should configure your permalinks structure to make it more SEO-friendly by displaying relevant keywords in your URL, instead of meaningless characters.

WordPress allows you to create a custom URL structure for your published and archived posts, so your pages can easily go from this …

To something like this …

In this step-by-step tutorial, you will learn how to configure the Permalinks section of your WordPress site to display your posts using SEO-friendly URLs instead of the out-of-the-box linking structure and help every new post you publish get better indexing in search engines like Google.

Configuring WordPress Permalinks

In your WP dashboard menu, select Settings > Permalinks …

This will bring you to 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 “pretty” permalinks instead for our posts. To do this, we will need to specify a different Permalink structure than the default.

Common Settings

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

(Configure 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/cruise-deals/how-to-save-money-on-cruise-travel

Instead of this …

http://www.mytravelsite.com/?p=3891

(Using post name permalinks helps visitors and search engines understand what your content is about)

Permalink Tags

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

• %year% – The year the post is published, displayed as four digits (e.g. ‘2016’)
• %monthnum% – Month of the year (e.g. ‘12’)
• %day% – The day the post is published (e.g. ‘06’)
• %hour% – The hour your post is published (e.g. ‘04’)
• %minute% – Minute of the hour (e.g. ‘36’)
• %second% – The exact second your post gets published (e.g. ‘51’)
• %post_id% – The unique ID # of your post (e.g. ‘5258’)
• %postname% – A correctly formatted version of the post title. For example, if the post title is ”Ten Signs That You’re About To Get Fired From Your Job!”, the postname tag will convert this into “ten-signs-that-youre-about-to-get-fired-from-your-job” (all characters converted to lower case and removed punctuation symbols) in the URL. Tip: You can always edit the wording in your post title in the post slug field on the Add/Edit Post/Page screens.
• %category% – A correctly formatted 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 ‘Custom Structure’ and adding the /%postname%/ tag.

Permalinks – Optional Settings

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

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 will make your category links display as ‘http://domain.com/topics/uncategorized/’.

So, if you add the following to your permalinks Optional > Category base settings field …

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

To something like this …

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

Remember to save your changes when you are done …

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 – Tips

Categories

To get the most 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 plugin developer Joost de Valk, here are a few points to consider if you are wondering whether or not to add categories to your permalink structure:

• If your category name is short and descriptive (e.g. uses a relevant keyword or keyword phrase), you may want to add the category tag 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 copy and decrease the SEO benefit.
• Do you plan to post content under only one category or multiple categories? If you plan 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 ”better” permalink structure to use. Use the permalink structure that you think will suit your site best. Many SEO experts recommend making your post URLs short enough to be attractive and long enough to be descriptive.

We provide more information about WordPress categories in other articles.

Create Timeless Posts

Another great tip from Joost de Valk is that unless your site is a news blog or you have any special reason to create dated website URLs, avoid using date-based permalink syntax when setting up your blog’s URLs.

(Avoid setting up URL structures that date your posts)

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

What About An Established Blog?

Normally, your site’s permalinks should be configured when you first install WordPress. This should be part of your site planning process.

If your site is already established or you have a lot of content already indexed in the search engines and you want to change the permalink structure, make sure that this is absolutely something that needs to be done, as doing so can create issues and errors.

301 Redirects

As you’ve seen in earlier screenshots, some WordPress site owners (or their web developers) seem to be completely unaware of the SEO-friendly URLs feature of WordPress.

Maybe you started out using the default WordPress permalinks and now you want to improve your SEO. Perhaps your website was configured to display post dates in your URLs and now all of your posts are perceived as being outdated and you want to remove the date tags of your permalinks.

The best way to edit your permalinks without negatively impacting your site’s SEO or rankings is to add ‘301 redirections’ to point links that were set up using the old permalink syntax to links that use the new permalink syntax.

A code ‘301’ is interpreted by search engines as a link that has permanently relocated. 301 redirection is the most efficient and search engine friendly way to redirect visitors to new site destinations and avoid ”page not found” errors if clicking on an old link.

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

You can add a link redirection system to your site using a WP plugin like Simple 301 Redirects, or Redirection, or use the services of a professional to help you set up and redirect your permalinks correctly to avoid problems and troubleshoot any errors.

(Set up 301 redirects using redirection plugins or get professional assistance)

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

http://codex.wordpress.org/Using_Permalinks

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