Wouldn’t it be great if after adding new content to your WordPress website or blog, the following happened … all from your post address:

• Readers could assess what the content is about,
• Google would easily discover your pages and correctly index their content to improve your search rankings,
• Every piece of content created on your site would have its own 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

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 other people will use to link to posts or sections of your site or the links you send in an email pointing readers to posts on your site. 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 have probably heard by now, WordPress is one of the best Content Management Systems you can use when it comes to publishing search optimized content.

WordPress is not only well optimized right out of the box, but its SEO aspect can be further improved using excellent SEO plugins.

If you are looking to optimize the SEO aspect of your site or blog, then you should not ignore the importance of your URLs. Search engines like Google place considerable weight on the URL structure of a site.

Permalinks are 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 turn our attention to the reason why you should use 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 above link with a string query to find information inside your database. It doesn’t really help your site with on-site search engine optimization.

As the screenshot below shows, many WordPress users haven’t yet set up their permalinks …

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

To get more SEO benefit out of using and improve your site’s traffic results, you will want to make sure to configure your permalinks structure to make it more search engine-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 go from this …

To something with an SEO-friendly URL like this …

Out of the box, WordPress URLs are not very SEO-friendly. This step-by-step tutorial shows you how to configure the Permalinks section of your WordPress site to get better indexing in search engines.

Setting Up 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 “pretty” permalinks instead for our posts. To do this, we will 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 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/europe-travel/how-to-save-money-on-cruise-travel

Instead of this …

http://www.mytravelsite.com/?p=598

(Using post name permalinks helps visitors understand what the 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. ‘2013’)
• %monthnum% – The month your post is published (e.g. ‘08’)
• %day% – Day of the month (e.g. ‘29’)
• %hour% – Hour of the day (e.g. ‘04’)
• %minute% – The minute your post is published (e.g. ‘20’)
• %second% – The exact second the post is published (e.g. ‘56’)
• %post_id% – The unique ID # of your post (e.g. ‘7136’)
• %postname% – A sanitized version of your post title. For example, if the post title is ”The Five Don’ts Of DIY Home Repair!”, the postname tag will convert this into “the-five-donts-of-diy-home-repair” (all lower case letters and punctuation symbols removed) in the URL. Tip: You can edit the URL 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 choosing the ‘Custom Structure’ option and using the /%postname%/ tag.

Optional Permalink Settings

This section lets you set up custom structures for your tag and category URLs.

You can change 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 “travel” would 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 this …

To this …

If you leave the optional settings fields blank WordPress uses the default settings.

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 – Additional Information

Use Descriptive Categories

To get the most SEO 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 and author of the WordPress SEO plugin Joost de Valk, here are a few things to keep in mind if you are wondering whether you should add categories to your permalinks or not:

• If your domain is short and your category slug 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 we recommend not using 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 ideal permalink structure to use. Choose a permalink structure you think will suit your needs best. Your post URLs should be short enough to be attractive and long enough to be descriptive.

We cover WordPress categories in other articles.

Create Timeless Posts

Another great tip from Joost de Valk is that unless your website provides news or time-specific information, or you have any special reason to date your site’s content, avoid selecting date-based permalink syntax when setting up your blog’s URLs.

(Avoid using permalinks that date your content)

Although using permalinks that time-stamp your content 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.

Changing Permalinks In An Established Site

Normally, your permalinks should be set up when you first install WordPress. This should be part of your website planning process.

If your site has been running for a while or your site already has a lot of content indexed in the search engines and you would like to change the permalink structure, make sure that this is really something that needs doing, as doing so could create issues and loss of traffic.

301 Redirects

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

Maybe when you started, your site used the default WordPress permalinks and now you would like to optimize your site better for search engines. Maybe your site was configured to display post dates in your web address and now all of your posts are showing as being 2-3 years old and you want to remove the date portion of your permalinks.

To change your permalinks without negatively affecting your site’s SEO or existing rankings you will need to add ‘301 redirections’ to point all links using the old permalink syntax to page URLs that use the new permalink syntax.

Search engines interpret a code ‘301’ as a link that has permanently moved to another location. 301 redirects are the most efficient and search engine friendly way to redirect visitors to new site destinations and avoid running into ‘404’ (Page not found) errors when following an old link.

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

You can add a link redirection system to your 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 301 redirects using a WP 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 search rankings. To learn more about using Permalinks, refer to the WordPress codex below:

http://codex.wordpress.org/Using_Permalinks

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