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

• Potential visitors to your site could quickly determine what the post was about,
• Google would find your posts faster,
• Every single content item you create on your site would have a unique identifier, making your site easier to manage.

Well, this is what a WordPress permalink lets you do!

How To Set Up And Use WordPress Permalinks

Permalinks – Definition

A permalink is the permanent URL to your individual WordPress posts, categories and other taxonomies (a way to group things together) like archives.

A permalink is the web address that visitors and search engines use to link to articles or sections of your site or the links you send in emails pointing readers to a particular item of content on your blog. Permalinks are often called “pretty” URLs.

Permalinks make the web address pointing to each post on your site permanent, hence a perma-link.

Permalinks – Why Do You Need To Use Them?

Hopefully, you are probably aware by now that, WordPress is one of the best CMS tools available when it comes to publishing search optimized content.

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

If you are looking to optimize the SEO aspect of your site, then you cannot ignore the importance of its URLs. Search engines like Google tend to pay special attention to the structure of URLs when indexing its content.

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

Now … let’s review why you should use permalinks when publishing content in WordPress.

Typically, a default WordPress installation uses a non-search engine friendly URL-naming structure for your posts that looks like this …

The above link structure is used by WordPress to locate information within your database. It doesn’t really mean much to anyone, and it doesn’t help your site with on-site search engine optimization.

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

Although Google is clearly still indexing the above sites, the owners of these sites are potentially missing out on additional SEO benefits.

To get optimal SEO benefit from using WordPress and improve your site’s rankings, you will want to make sure to configure your permalinks structure to make it more SEO-friendly by displaying relevant keywords in your URL, instead of meaningless numbers and symbols.

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

To something like this …

Out of the box, WordPress post URLs are not very search engine-friendly. This tutorial shows you how to configure the Permalinks section of your WordPress site to automatically help your content get better indexing results in search engines.

How To Set Up Your WordPress Permalinks

In your WordPress admin menu, click on 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 “pretty” permalink instead for our posts. To do this, we need to specify a different Permalink structure than the one set by default.

Common Permalink 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/river-cruises/how-to-save-money-on-cruise-travel

Instead of this …

http://www.mytravelsite.com/?p=4651

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

WordPress Permalink Tags

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

• %year% – The year the post gets published, four digits (e.g. ‘2015’)
• %monthnum% – Month of the year (e.g. ‘10’)
• %day% – Day of the month (e.g. ‘05’)
• %hour% – Hour of the day (e.g. ‘03’)
• %minute% – The minute the post is published (e.g. ‘38’)
• %second% – Second of the minute (e.g. ‘23’)
• %post_id% – The unique ID # of the post (e.g. ‘2916’)
• %postname% – A correctly formatted version of your 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 letters converted to lower case and no exclamation marks) in the URL. Tip: You can always edit the words 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 sanitized 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’ option and adding the /%postname%/ tag.

Optional Permalink Settings

If you need to configure custom structures for your category and tag pages you can do this in this section.

This changes the ‘base’ tag or category for your URLs using the following syntax:

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

For example, changing your category base to “travel” will make your category links display as ‘http://domain.com/travel/uncategorized/’.

So, if you enter the following in your permalinks Optional > Category base settings section …

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

To something like this …

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

Remember to save any 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

Set Up Your Categories

To get maximum SEO benefit out of using Permalinks, remember 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 points to consider if you are wondering whether or not to add categories to your permalink structure:

• If your category 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 copy or share and decrease the SEO benefit.
• 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 ideal permalink structure to use. Choose a permalink structure you think will suit your needs best. Your web address should be short enough to be attractive and long enough to be descriptive.

We provide detailed information about WordPress categories in other tutorials.

Don’t Use Date Permalinks

Another tip from Joost de Valk is that unless your goal is to run a news blog or there is a special reason why you need to create dated web URLs, it’s best to avoid selecting date-based permalink settings when setting up your URLs.

(Avoid setting up URL structures that time-stamp your posts)

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

What About Changing Permalinks In Established Sites?

Normally, your permalinks should be configured when you perform a new WordPress installation. This should be part of your website planning process.

If your website or blog is already established or your site already has a lot of content indexed in the search engines and you want to change the permalink structure, make sure that this is really something that needs to be done, as making changes to permalinks after your site has already been up and running for a while can create issues and errors.

301 Redirection

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

Maybe when you started, your site used the default WordPress permalinks and now you want to improve your SEO. Perhaps your website was originally set up to display post dates in your web address and now all of your content is showing as being 2-3 years old and you want to delete the date portion in your permalinks.

To change your permalinks without impacting your site’s SEO or rankings in a negative way you will need to add ‘301 redirects’ to reassign links that were set up using the old permalink syntax to web URLs using the new permalinks structure.

A ’301′ code is interpreted by search engines as a link that has permanently been moved elsewhere. 301 redirects are the most efficient and search engine friendly way to redirect users to new website destinations and avoid page errors when clicking on an old link.

To effectively change your syntax and avoid damaging your search rankings, sending visitors to error pages, etc. you will need to set up your redirection system before messing with the permalink structure of your site.

You can add a link redirection system to your do this using a WordPress redirection 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 any issues and troubleshoot any errors.

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

Congratulations! Now you know how to set up your site’s permalinks to display search engine-friendly URLs for your posts and improve your search search rankings. To learn more about using Permalinks, see the WordPress codex here:

http://codex.wordpress.org/Using_Permalinks

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