Wouldn’t it be great if you could publish new content on your WordPress site, and the following happened … just from your URL:

• Users could gain an understanding of what the post was about,
• Search engines would discover your posts faster,
• Each content item published on your website or blog would have a unique identifier, making things easier to manage.

Well, this is what permalinks let you do!

How To Set Up And Use WordPress Permalinks

Permalink – What Is It?

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

A permalink is the web address that others will use to link to articles or sections of your site or the links you send in an email pointing to your posts. Permalinks are sometimes referred to as “pretty” URLs.

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

Permalinks – Why Use Them?

As you are probably aware, WordPress is one of the best CMS applications available when it comes to SEO.

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

If you focus on the SEO aspect of your website, then you cannot ignore the importance of its URLs. Search engines like Google tend to pay special attention to the URL structure of a site.

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

Now … let’s turn our attention to why you should set up permalinks in WordPress.

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

WordPress uses the link with a string query shown above to find information within your database. It doesn’t really mean much to anyone, and it doesn’t help your website with on-site search engine optimization.

As you can see from the image below taken directly from Google search listings, many WordPress site owners have not yet set up their sites to publish search optimized content online …

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

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

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

To something like this …

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

Changing Your WordPress Permalinks

In your WordPress dashboard click on, Settings > Permalinks …

This will bring 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 will need to specify a different Permalink structure than the default one.

Common Permalink Settings

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

(Change 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-tips/how-to-save-money-on-cruise-travel

Instead of this …

http://www.mytravelsite.com/?p=4741

(Using permalinks helps search engines and visitors understand what the post is about)

WordPress Permalink Tags

“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, four digits (e.g. ‘2016’)
• %monthnum% – The month the post gets published (e.g. ‘12’)
• %day% – The day the post gets published (e.g. ‘03’)
• %hour% – The hour your post is published (e.g. ‘22’)
• %minute% – The minute your post is published (e.g. ‘27’)
• %second% – The exact second your post is published (e.g. ‘31’)
• %post_id% – The unique ID # of your post (e.g. ‘604’)
• %postname% – A correctly formatted 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 lower case characters and punctuation marks deleted) in the URL. Tip: You can edit the wording in your post title 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 ‘Custom Structure’ and using the /%postname%/ tag.

Permalinks – Optional Settings

If you need to configure custom structures for your tag and category page URLs here is where you would do this.

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

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

For example, using “recipes” as your category base would display your category links as ‘http://domain.com/recipes/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 optional settings fields blank the defaults will be used.

Remember to save any changes after 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 the greatest benefit from 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 a few things to keep in mind if you are wondering whether you should add categories to your permalink structure or not:

• If your category name is short and descriptive (e.g. uses a relevant keyword or keyword phrase), you may want to use the category tag in 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 reduce the SEO benefit.
• 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 is no ”better” 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.

Avoid Setting Up Permalinks That Time-Stamp Your Content

Another great tip from Joost de Valk is that unless your site is a news site or you have any special reason to date your site’s content, avoid using date-based permalink syntax for your site’s URLs.

(Avoid setting up permalinks that date your content)

Although setting up URL structures that date your posts may be considered better that using no permalinks at all from an SEO point-of-view, 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 If My Blog Already Has Content?

Normally, it’s best to configure your site’s 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 a lot of posts indexed in the search engines and you want to change the permalink structure, make sure that this is something that absolutely needs doing, as doing so can create SEO issues and loss of traffic.

301 Redirection

As you’ve seen in the above screenshots of actual search results, some WordPress users (or whoever set up their site) seem to be unaware of the permalinks feature of WordPress.

Maybe when you started, your site used the default WordPress URL structure and now you would like to optimize your site better for search engines. Maybe your website or blog was configured 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 remove the date tags in your permalinks.

The best way to modify your URL structure without affecting your site’s SEO or existing rankings in a negative way is to use ‘301 redirections’ to point all links using the previous permalink syntax to web URLs using the new permalink syntax.

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

To effectively change your permalink syntax and avoid damaging your search rankings, sending visitors to broken links, etc. you should add a redirection system before changing the permalink structure of your site.

You can site using WP plugins like Simple 301 Redirects, or Redirection, or use the services of a professional to assist you with setting up and redirecting your permalinks correctly to avoid any issues and troubleshoot any errors.

(Set up 301 redirects using a WordPress redirection plugin or get professional help)

Congratulations! Now you know about the built-in system WordPress uses to display SEO-friendly URLs for your posts. To learn more about using Permalinks, see the WordPress codex below:

http://codex.wordpress.org/Using_Permalinks

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