Wouldn’t it be great if you could add a new page to your WordPress website or blog, and the following would then take place … all from your page address:

• Site visitors could easily understand what your page was about,
• Search engines could find your posts faster,
• Each content item you create on your website or blog would have its own unique ID, making your content easier to manage.

Well, this is what WordPress 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 group things together) like archives.

A permalink is the URL that other people will use to link to your articles or sections of your site or the links you send in emails pointing readers to content items on your site. Some people also call permalinks “pretty” URLs.

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

Permalinks – Why Use Them?

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

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

If you focus on the SEO aspect of your website, then you cannot ignore the importance of your site’s URLs. Google tends to pay special attention to the structure of a site’s URLs when indexing its site pages.

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

Now … let’s see the reason why it’s best to set up permalinks in WordPress.

By default, a WordPress installation uses a link-naming structure for your posts that isn’t very search engine friendly and looks like this …

The above link structure is used by WordPress to find information within your database. It does not mean anything to either visitors or search engines, and it doesn’t help your site with on-site search engine optimization.

As you can see from the screenshot below taken directly from Google search results, many site owners have not yet configured their sites to use WordPress permalinks …

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

To get greater SEO benefit from using WordPress and improve your site’s rankings, you will want to make sure to configure your permalinks structure to make it more SEO-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 with an SEO-friendly URL like this …

In this step-by-step tutorial, you will learn how to set up your WordPress permalinks to display posts with 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 in Google.

How To Change WordPress Permalinks

Log into your WordPress admin and select Settings > Permalinks …

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

Common 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/europe-cruises/how-to-save-money-on-cruise-travel

Instead of this …

http://www.mytravelsite.com/?p=9449

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

Creating SEO-Friendly 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, displayed as four digits (e.g. ‘2013’)
• %monthnum% – The month the post is published (e.g. ‘02’)
• %day% – Day of the month (e.g. ‘13’)
• %hour% – Hour of the day (e.g. ‘02’)
• %minute% – Minute of the hour (e.g. ‘40’)
• %second% – Second of the minute (e.g. ‘48’)
• %post_id% – The unique ID # of your post (e.g. ‘6166’)
• %postname% – A sanitized 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 lower case letters and removed exclamation marks) in the URL. Tip: You can edit this wording 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 adding the /%postname%/ tag in the ‘Custom Structure’ option.

Permalinks – Optional Settings

Here you can enter custom structures for your category and tag URLs.

This changes the ‘base’ tag or category for your URLs using the following structure:

• 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 make the following change in your permalinks Optional > Category base settings section …

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

To something like this …

If you leave the fields blank WordPress uses the defaults.

Remember to save any changes after you have 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 Notes

Set Up Categories

To get the most 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 expert Joost de Valk, here are some points to consider 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.
• Do you plan to post content under only one category or multiple categories? If you are going 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. Use a permalink structure that 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 another article.

Avoid Time-Stamping URLs

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

(Avoid using URL structures that time-stamp your content)

Visitors 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 About An Established Site?

Normally, it’s best to set up your site’s permalinks when you perform a new WordPress installation. 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 posts indexed in the search engines and you would like to change the permalink structure, make sure that this is something that absolutely needs doing, as doing so can create issues and loss of traffic.

301 Redirection

As you’ve seen in earlier screenshots, many website owners (or their web developers) are unaware of the SEO-friendly URLs feature of WordPress.

Maybe when you started out, your site used the default WordPress URL structure and now you want to improve your site’s SEO. Maybe your site was originally set up to display post dates in your web address and now all of your content is perceived as being out-of-date and you want to delete the date portion of the URLs.

The best way to edit your URL structure without negatively impacting your site’s SEO or rankings is to use ‘301 redirections’ to point links using the old permalink syntax to destinations using the new permalinks syntax.

Search engines interpret a ’301′ code as a link that has permanently moved elsewhere. 301 redirects are the most efficient and search engine friendly way to redirect users to new site destinations and avoid running into ‘404’ (Page not found) errors if clicking on an old link.

To create an effective syntax change and avoid damaging your search 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 site or blog using a redirection 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 problems and troubleshoot any errors.

(Set up 301 redirections using plugins or use the services of a professional)

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

http://codex.wordpress.org/Using_Permalinks

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