Wouldn’t it be great if after publishing a new post on your WordPress site, the following took place … just from your URL:

• Readers could tell what the post is about,
• Search engines would be able to find your pages faster,
• Each content item published on your website would have a unique ID, making your content easier to manage.

Well, with permalinks you can!

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 people and search engines will use to link to your articles or sections of your site or the links you send in an email pointing to a specific item of content on your blog. Permalinks are often called “pretty” URLs.

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

Why Do You Need To Use Permalinks?

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

WordPress is not only well optimized straight out of the box, but there are SEO plugins you can install 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 your URLs. Search engines like Google tend to give special significance to the URL structure of your site.

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

Now … let’s take a look at why it’s best to set up permalinks if publishing content in WordPress.

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

The link structure shown above is used by WordPress to locate data inside its database. It doesn’t really help your site with on-site search engine optimization.

As the screenshot image from Google search listings below shows, many site owners haven’t yet configured their permalinks to publish search optimized content online …

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

To get the most SEO benefit out of using and improve your site’s rankings, you should set up your permalinks structure to make it more search engine-friendly by displaying relevant keywords in your URL, instead of meaningless numbers and symbols.

WordPress lets you create a custom URL structure for your published and archived posts, so your pages can easily go from something that is non-SEO friendly like this …

To this …

In this step-by-step tutorial, you will learn how to configure the Permalinks section of your WordPress site to display posts using search engine-friendly URLs instead of the default linking structure and help every new post you publish on your site or blog automatically get better indexing results in search engines.

How To Change Your WordPress Permalinks

From your WordPress administration menu, select 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 search engine friendly URLs instead for our posts. To do this, we need to specify a different Permalink structure than the default.

Permalinks - Common Settings

In the Common Settings section, select Custom Structure, then add one or more ‘tags’ (see below) to create SEO-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/travel-europe/river-cruise-holiday-bargains

Instead of this …

http://www.mytravelsite.com/?p=4958

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

Pretty URL Tags

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

• %year% – The year the post is published, four digits (e.g. ‘2011’)
• %monthnum% – The month your post gets published (e.g. ‘02’)
• %day% – The day your post gets published (e.g. ‘06’)
• %hour% – The hour your post gets published (e.g. ‘03’)
• %minute% – The minute the post is published (e.g. ‘58’)
• %second% – The exact second your post gets published (e.g. ‘33’)
• %post_id% – The unique ID # of your post (e.g. ‘8475’)
• %postname% – A correctly formatted version of your 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 characters converted to lower case and removed 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 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 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’ setting and using the /%postname%/ tag.

Permalinks – Optional Settings

In this section, you can enter custom structures for your category and tag archive page URLs.

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

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

For example, using “topics” as your category base would display your category links as ‘http://domain.com/topics/category_name/’.

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

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

To this …

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

Remember to save your changes when finished …

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

Use Short, Descriptive Categories

To get greater 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 expert Joost de Valk, here are a few 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. uses a relevant keyword or keyword phrase), 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 and decrease 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 really is no ideal permalink structure to use. Use the permalink structure you think will suit your needs best. SEO experts recommend making your web addresses short enough to be attractive and long enough to be descriptive.

We provide more information about WordPress categories in other tutorials.

Don’t Use Date Permalinks

Another tip from Joost de Valk is that unless your website provides news or time-specific information, or there is a special reason why you need to date your site’s content, it’s best to avoid selecting date-based permalinks when configuring your blog’s URLs.

(Avoid using permalinks that time-stamp your posts)

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

Changing Your Permalink Structure In Site With Published Posts

Normally, your permalinks should be set up when you install a new WordPress site. This should be part of your site planning process.

If your website or blog has been running for a while or you have a lot of content already indexed in the search engines and you would like to change the permalink structure, make sure that this is absolutely necessary, as doing so could create issues and errors.

301 Redirects

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

Maybe when you started out, your site used the default WordPress permalinks 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 URLs and now all of your content is showing as being two or three years old and you want to remove the date tags in the permalinks.

The best way to edit your permalinks without impacting your site’s SEO or existing rankings in a negative way is to use ‘301 redirects’ to reassign links set up using the previous permalink structure to web URLs that use the new permalinks syntax.

A ’301′ code is interpreted by search engines as a link that has permanently relocated to another destination. 301 redirection is the most efficient and search engine friendly way to redirect visitors to new website destinations and avoid running into page errors when following an old link.

To create an effective permalink syntax change and avoid damaging your search rankings, sending visitors to broken links, etc. you should set up your redirection system before changing the permalink structure of your site.

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

(Set up 301 redirections using redirection plugins or get professional help)

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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