Wouldn’t it be great if after adding new content to your WordPress website, the following took place … just from your post URL:

• Users could easily assess what the page was about,
• Search engines could easily discover your post and correctly index the content for better search rankings,
• Each item of content published on your website would have its own unique identifier, making your content easier to manage.

Well, with permalinks you can easily do this!

How To Set Up And Use WordPress Permalinks

Permalinks – Definition

Permalinks are the permanent URLs to an individual WordPress post, category, or other taxonomy (a way to group things together) like archives.

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

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

Why Use Permalinks?

Hopefully, you probably know by now that, WordPress is one of the best Content Management Systems 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 install that can help to enhance its SEO aspect considerably.

If you are looking to optimize the SEO aspect of your site, then you cannot ignore the importance of its site’s URLs. Google tends to give special consideration to the structure of your site’s URLs when indexing its content.

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

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

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

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

As the screenshot taken from Google search listings below shows, many site owners haven’t yet configured their permalinks …

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

To get the maximum SEO benefit from using and improve your site’s traffic results, you should set up 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 pages can go from this …

To this …

Out of the box, WordPress URLs are not very search engine-friendly. In this step-by-step tutorial, you will learn how to configure your WP permalinks to help your content rank better in search engines.

How To Configure WordPress Permalinks

In your WP dashboard menu, 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 “pretty” permalinks 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 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/cruise-travel/seven-best-european-river-cruises

Instead of this …

http://www.mytravelsite.com/?p=604

(Using post name permalinks helps visitors understand what the content is about)

WordPress Permalink Tags

“Pretty” permalinks, 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. ‘2015’)
• %monthnum% – The month your post is published (e.g. ‘03’)
• %day% – Day of the month (e.g. ‘20’)
• %hour% – The hour the post is published (e.g. ‘03’)
• %minute% – Minute of the hour (e.g. ‘06’)
• %second% – Second of the minute (e.g. ‘06’)
• %post_id% – The unique ID # of your post (e.g. ‘840’)
• %postname% – A correctly formatted version of the post title. For example, if your post title is “Top Five Budget Travel Tips!”, the postname tag will convert this into “top-five-budget-travel-tips” (all lower case characters and punctuation symbol deleted) in the URL. Tip: You can edit the words in your post title 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 ‘Custom Structure’ and adding the /%postname%/ tag.

Permalinks – Optional Settings

If you need to set up custom structures for your tag and category URLs you can do this in this section.

This changes the ‘base’ category or tag of 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 “recipes” will display your category links as ‘http://domain.com/recipes/category_name/’.

So, if you enter the following in your permalinks Optional > Category base settings section …

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

To this …

If you leave the fields blank the default settings 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 Info

Use Descriptive Categories

To get the best SEO benefit out of using Permalinks, you will need to set up your WordPress Categories correctly. If you do not have any categories set up, adding a category tag to your permalink forces WordPress to use the default category (uncategorized).

According to WordPress SEO expert and author of the WordPress SEO plugin Joost de Valk, here are a few points to keep in mind if you are wondering whether or not to add categories to your permalink structure:

• If your domain is short and your category slug 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 or share and decrease 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.

Ultimately, when it comes to adding category vs no category there really is no perfect permalink structure to use. Use a permalink structure that you think will suit your site best. SEO experts recommend making your web address short enough to be attractive and long enough to be descriptive.

We cover WordPress categories in another tutorial.

Make Your Posts Timeless

Another tip from Joost de Valk is that unless your website is a news site or you have a special reason to create dated website addresses, avoid choosing date-based permalink options when configuring your blog’s URLs.

(Avoid setting up permalinks that time-stamp your content)

Although using URL structures that date your content may be considered better that using no permalinks at all from an SEO aspect, visitors are less likely to click on a post if it is several years old, even if the content is relevant to the answers they are searching for.

What About Changing Permalinks In An Established Site?

Normally, your permalinks should be configured when you create a new WordPress site. This should be part of your site planning process.

If your site is already established 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 something that absolutely needs doing, as making changes to permalinks after your site has already been running for a while 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 their web developers) seem to be completely 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 would like to improve your SEO. Perhaps your website was configured to display post dates in your web address and now all of your posts are perceived as being out-of-date and you want to delete the date portion of the permalinks.

The best way to edit your permalink structure without negatively impacting your site’s SEO or existing rankings is to add ‘301 redirections’ to reassign links using the previous URL syntax to post URLs that use the new permalink syntax.

Search engines interpret a ’301′ code as a link that has been permanently relocated. 301 redirects are the most effective and search engine friendly way to redirect visitors to new website destinations and avoid ”page not found” errors when they click on an old link.

To create an effective permalink syntax change and avoid SEO problems, sending visitors to error pages, etc. you should install and set up a redirection system before changing the permalink structure of your site.

You can site or blog using a WP 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 issues and troubleshoot any errors.

(Set up a redirection system using a WP redirection plugin or get professional assistance)

Congratulations! Now you know how to configure your blog to display search engine-friendly URLs for your posts. For additional information on using Permalinks, refer to the official WordPress documentation below:

http://codex.wordpress.org/Using_Permalinks

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