Wouldn’t it be great if you could just add content to your website or blog, and the following took place … all from your post URL:

• Visitors could easily understand what the post is about,
• Search engines could easily find your posts and correctly index their content to improve your search results,
• Every item of content published on your site would have a unique ID, making things easier to manage.

Well, this is what a permalink lets you do!

How To Set Up And Use WordPress Permalinks

Permalink – What Is It?

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 others will use to link to posts or sections of your site or the links you send in an email pointing readers to articles on your site. Permalinks are often called “pretty” URLs.

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

Why Use Permalinks?

Hopefully, you probably know by now that, WordPress is one of the best CMS tools you can use when it comes to publishing search engines optimized content.

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

If you focus on 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 site pages.

Permalinks can be used to make the links on your site into “prettier” 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 use permalinks in WordPress.

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

WordPress uses the link structure with a string query shown above to locate information within its database. It doesn’t really mean anything to search engines or visitors, and it doesn’t help your site with on-site SEO.

As you can see from the screenshot below, many site owners haven’t set up their sites to publish search optimized content online …

Although these sites are still getting their content indexed on search engines, they are missing out on extra SEO benefits.

To get optimal SEO benefit out of using 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 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 with an SEO-friendly URL like this …

In this tutorial, you will learn how to set up the Permalinks section of your WordPress site to display posts using search engine-friendly URLs instead of the out-of-the-box URL structure and help every new post you publish on your site get better indexing in Google.

Configuring WordPress Permalinks

Log into your WordPress admin section and click on Settings > Permalinks …

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

Common Settings – Permalinks

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/budget-travel/3-best-european-river-cruise-destinations

Instead of this …

http://www.mytravelsite.com/?p=9975

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

Using Permalink Tags In Custom Structure

“Pretty” URLs, or SEO-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. ‘2014’)
• %monthnum% – The month your post is published (e.g. ‘10’)
• %day% – Day of the month (e.g. ‘10’)
• %hour% – The hour your post gets published (e.g. ‘14’)
• %minute% – Minute of the hour (e.g. ‘41’)
• %second% – The exact second the post is published (e.g. ‘04’)
• %post_id% – The unique ID # of the post (e.g. ‘2856’)
• %postname% – A correctly formatted version of the post title. For example, if your 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 punctuation marks) in the URL. Tip: You can edit this wording 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 adding the /%postname%/ tag in the ‘Custom Structure’ option.

Permalinks – Optional Settings

If you need to configure custom permalinks 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, changing your category base to “news” would make your category links display as ‘http://domain.com/news/category_name/’.

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

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

To this …

If you leave these fields blank the defaults will be used.

Remember to save your changes when 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 – Additional Information

Set Up Categories

To get maximum SEO benefit out of using Permalinks, it’s important 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 expert Joost de Valk, here are some points to keep in mind if you are wondering whether or not to add categories to your permalinks:

• If your domain is short and your category 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 share and reduce 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. Use a permalink structure you think will suit your site best. Your web address should be short enough to be attractive and long enough to be descriptive.

We cover WordPress categories in another article.

Make Your Posts Timeless

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

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

People 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 If My Site Has Published Content?

Normally, it’s best to configure your site’s permalinks when you install a new WordPress site. 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 content 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 could create issues and errors.

301 Redirects

As you’ve seen in the above screenshots of actual search results, many WordPress users (or whoever set up their site) are completely unaware of the SEO-friendly URLs 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 website was originally set up to display post dates in your URLs and now all of your posts are perceived as being outdated and you want to delete the date portion in your permalinks.

To edit your permalinks without negatively impacting your site’s SEO you should use ‘301 redirects’ to reassign links set up using the old URL syntax to links that use the new permalink syntax.

Search engines interpret a code ‘301’ as a link that has permanently relocated to another address. 301 redirects are the most effective and search engine friendly way to redirect visitors to new web page destinations and avoid page errors if following an old link.

To effectively change your syntax and avoid SEO problems, sending visitors to error pages, etc. you will need to add your redirection system before messing with the permalink structure of your site.

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

(Set up link redirections using a WordPress plugin 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 and improve your search results. For additional information on using Permalinks, refer to the WordPress codex below:

http://codex.wordpress.org/Using_Permalinks

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