Wouldn’t it be great if after adding a new page to your site, the following took place … all from your web address:

• Visitors could quickly assess what the content is about,
• Search engines would easily discover your page and correctly index the content to improve your search results,
• Every single piece of content added to your website would have a unique identifier, making your content easier to manage.

Well, this is what permalinks let you do!

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 web address that visitors and search engines use to link to articles or sections of your site or the links you send in an email pointing to a particular item of content on your site. Permalinks are also referred to as “pretty” URLs.

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

Permalinks – Why Do I Need To Use Them?

As you are probably aware, WordPress is one of the best Content Management Systems available when it comes to publishing search optimized content.

WordPress is not only well optimized straight out of the box, but there are excellent SEO plugins you can install that can easily help to enhance its SEO aspect.

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

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

Now … let’s see the reason why you may need to set up permalinks if publishing content in WordPress.

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

WordPress uses the above link structure to locate information within your database. It does not mean anything to visitors or search engines, and it doesn’t help your site with on-site search engine optimization.

As the screenshot below shows, many WordPress site owners haven’t configured their sites to use permalinks …

Although these sites are still getting their content indexed on search engines, these site owners are missing out on additional SEO benefits.

To get optimal SEO benefit from using WordPress 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 numbers and symbols.

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

To something with an SEO-friendly URL like this …

By default, WordPress URLs are not very search engine-friendly. In this step-by-step tutorial, you will learn how to configure your WordPress permalinks to display your posts using SEO-friendly URLs.

Configuring WordPress Permalinks

Log into your WordPress administration section and 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 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 search engine-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/travel-europe/river-cruise-holiday-deals

Instead of this …

http://www.mytravelsite.com/?p=2498

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

Search Engine-Friendly Tags

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

• %year% – The year of the post, four digits (e.g. ‘2011’)
• %monthnum% – Month of the year (e.g. ‘08’)
• %day% – The day the post gets published (e.g. ‘07’)
• %hour% – The hour your post gets published (e.g. ‘11’)
• %minute% – The minute the post is published (e.g. ‘42’)
• %second% – The exact second the post is published (e.g. ‘20’)
• %post_id% – The unique ID # of the post (e.g. ‘2333’)
• %postname% – A sanitized version of the 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 letters converted to lower case and punctuation symbols deleted) in the URL. Tip: You can edit the URL text 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 adding the /%postname%/ tag in the ‘Custom Structure’ setting.

Optional Permalink Settings

If you need to set up custom structures for your tag and category pages here is where you would do this.

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

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

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

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

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

To something like this …

If you leave these fields blank WordPress uses the defaults.

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

Use Short, Descriptive Categories

To get maximum benefit out of using Permalinks, remember to set up your WordPress Categories correctly. If you do not have any categories set up, WordPress will use the default category (uncategorized).

According to WordPress SEO plugin developer Joost de Valk, here are some points to consider 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 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.
• 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.

Ultimately, when it comes to category vs no category there is no ideal permalink structure to use. Choose the permalink structure that you think will suit your site best. Many SEO experts and webmasters recommend making your web addresses short enough to be attractive and long enough to be descriptive.

We provide detailed information about WordPress categories in other articles.

Make Your Content Timeless

Another useful tip from Joost de Valk is that unless your aim is to run a news website or there is a special reason why you need to date your site’s content, avoid using date-based permalink syntax when setting up your blog’s URLs.

(Avoid setting up permalinks that date your content)

Although setting up URL structures that time-stamp your content is better that using no permalinks at all from an SEO point-of-view, visitors are less likely to click on a post if it is a couple of years old, even if the content is relevant to what they are searching for.

Changing The Permalink Structure In Site With Published Posts

Normally, it’s best to set up your site’s permalinks when you create a new WordPress site. This should be part of your site planning process.

If your site has been running for a while 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 really something that needs doing, as making changes to permalinks after your site has been up and running for a while could create SEO issues and errors.

301 Redirection

As you’ve seen earlier, many WordPress users (or their web developers) seem to be unaware of the SEO-friendly URLs feature of WordPress.

Maybe you started out using the default WordPress URL structure and now you want to improve your site’s SEO. Perhaps your site was originally set up to display post dates in your URLs and now all of your posts are perceived as being out-of-date and you want to delete the date portion of the URLs.

To edit your permalinks without negatively affecting your site’s SEO or rankings you will need to add ‘301 redirects’ to reassign links that were set up using the old URL syntax to web addresses that use the new permalinks syntax.

A code ‘301’ is interpreted by search engines as a link that has permanently been moved elsewhere. 301 redirection is the most effective and search engine friendly way to redirect users to new site destinations and avoid running into ”page not found” errors when following an old link.

To effectively change your syntax and avoid damaging your 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 WordPress site using plugins 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 link redirections using plugins or use the services of a professional)

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

http://codex.wordpress.org/Using_Permalinks

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