Wouldn’t it be great if you could simply add a new post to your website, and the following happened … just from your post address:

• Potential site visitors could understand what the page is about,
• Google would easily find your post and correctly index the content for better search rankings,
• Each content item published on your website would have a unique identifier, making your site easier to manage.

Well, with WordPress permalinks this can easily be done!

How To Set Up And Use WordPress Permalinks

What Is A Permalink?

Permalinks are the permanent URLs to your individual posts, categories and other taxonomies (a way to organize things together) like archives.

A permalink is the URL that people and search engines use to link to posts or sections of your site or the links you send in an email pointing to content items on your website. Some people also call permalinks “pretty” URLs.

Permalinks make the web address pointing to each post on your website permanent, hence a permalink.

Permalinks – Why Do I Need To Use Them?

Hopefully, you are probably aware by now that, WordPress is one of the best Content Management Systems you can use when it comes to SEO.

WordPress is not only great for SEO out of the box, but there are SEO plugins you can install that can help to improve its SEO aspect.

If you focus on the SEO aspect of your site, then you should not ignore the importance of your URLs. Google places considerable weight on the URL structure of a site.

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

Now … let’s take a look at why you should configure your permalinks when publishing content in WordPress.

By default, a WordPress installation uses a URL 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 its database. It does not 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 taken from Google search results, many WordPress users haven’t set up their sites to publish search optimized content …

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

To get the greatest 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 offers the ability to create a custom URL structure for your published and archived posts, so your content can easily go from this …

To something with an SEO-friendly URL like this …

By default, WordPress post URLs are not very search engine-friendly. In this tutorial, you will learn how to configure your permalinks in WordPress to display your posts using SEO-friendly URLs.

Setting Up Your WordPress Permalinks

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

Common Settings – Permalinks

In the Common Settings section, select Custom Structure, then add one or more ‘tags’ (see below) to create search engine-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/cruise-travel/romantic-european-river-cruises

Instead of this …

http://www.mytravelsite.com/?p=6808

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

Pretty URL Tags

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

• %year% – The year of the post, four digits (e.g. ‘2013’)
• %monthnum% – Month of the year (e.g. ‘02’)
• %day% – Day of the month (e.g. ‘25’)
• %hour% – Hour of the day (e.g. ‘01’)
• %minute% – Minute of the hour (e.g. ‘19’)
• %second% – Second of the minute (e.g. ‘53’)
• %post_id% – The unique ID # of the post (e.g. ‘9456’)
• %postname% – A sanitized version of the post title. For example, if your post title is ”It Ain’t Worth Doin’ No More!”, the postname tag will convert this into “it-aint-worth-doin-no-more” (all lower case letters and no punctuation symbols) in the URL. Tip: You can always 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 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 set up custom permalinks for your category and tag URLs here is where you would do this.

You can change the ‘base’ tag or category of your URLs using the following structure:

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

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

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

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

To something like 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

Use Descriptive Categories

To get more benefit from using Permalinks, you will need 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 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 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 share or 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.

Ultimately, when it comes to category vs no category there is no ”better” permalink structure to use. Use the permalink structure that you think will suit your needs best. Many SEO experts recommend making your web addresses short enough to be attractive and long enough to be descriptive.

We cover WordPress categories in other articles.

Avoid Setting Up URL Structures That Time-Stamp Your Posts

Another useful tip from Joost de Valk is that unless your site provides news, or you have any special reason to date your content, avoid choosing date-based permalink options when setting up your blog’s URLs.

(Avoid using URL structures that date your content)

People are less likely to click on a post if it is a couple of years old, even if the content is relevant to what they are searching for.

What If My Site Already Has Content?

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

If your website has been running for a while or you have a lot of content already indexed in the search engines and you want to change the permalink structure, make sure that this is absolutely necessary, as making changes to permalinks after your site has been going for a while can create issues and loss of traffic.

301 Redirection

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

Maybe when you started out, your site used the default WordPress URL structure and now you want to optimize your site better for search engines. Maybe your site was originally set up to display post dates in your URLs and now all of your posts are perceived as being out-of-date and you want to remove the date portion in your permalinks.

To modify your URL structure without impacting your site’s SEO or existing rankings in a negative way you should use ‘301 redirects’ to reassign links set up using the previous URL syntax to URLs using the new permalinks structure.

Search engines interpret a ’301′ code as a link that has permanently been relocated to another destination. 301 redirects are the most efficient and search engine friendly way to redirect visitors to new web page destinations and avoid running into page errors if clicking on an old link.

To create an effective permalink syntax change and avoid damaging your rankings, sending visitors to error pages, etc. you will need to set up a redirection system before messing with the permalink structure of your site.

You can WordPress site using a plugin like Simple 301 Redirects, or Redirection, or use the services of a professional to assist you with setting up and redirecting your permalinks correctly to avoid any problems and troubleshoot any errors.

(Set up 301 redirects using redirection plugins or get professional assistance)

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, see the WordPress codex here:

http://codex.wordpress.org/Using_Permalinks

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