Wouldn’t it be great if you could just publish new content on your website or blog, and the following happened … all from your post URL:

• Potential site visitors could quickly assess what the page is about,
• Google could discover your posts faster,
• Every single item of content published on your website or blog would have its own unique ID, making your content easier to manage.

Well, this is what a permalink lets you do!

How To Set Up And Use WordPress Permalinks

Permalinks – Definition

A permalink is the permanent URL to your individual posts, categories and other taxonomies (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 an email pointing to a specific item of content on your website. Permalinks are often called “pretty” URLs.

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

Permalinks – Why Do I Need To Use Them?

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

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

If you focus on the SEO aspect of your site or blog, then you cannot ignore the importance of your URLs. Search engines like Google tend to pay special attention to the URL structure of your site.

Permalinks are used to turn links on your site into “prettier” and more “search engine friendly” URLs. Permalinks 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 URL structure for your posts that isn’t very search engine friendly and looks like this …

WordPress uses the above link structure to locate information inside your database. It does not mean anything to search engines or visitors, and it doesn’t help your site with on-site search engine optimization.

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

Although Google is still indexing the above sites, these site owners are missing out on extra SEO benefits.

To get the most SEO benefit from using and improve your site’s traffic results, you should set up your permalinks structure to make it more search engine-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 posts, so your pages can easily go from something that is non-SEO friendly like this …

To this …

By default, WordPress URLs are not very SEO-friendly. This step-by-step tutorial shows you how to configure your WP permalinks to display your posts using search engine-friendly URLs.

Configuring Your WordPress Permalinks

Log into your WP admin and click on Settings > Permalinks …

This brings you to 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 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 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/travel-europe/how-to-save-money-on-cruise-travel

Instead of this …

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

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

WordPress Permalink Tags

“Pretty” permalinks, or search engine-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. ‘12’)
• %day% – The day the post gets published (e.g. ‘21’)
• %hour% – The hour your post gets published (e.g. ‘17’)
• %minute% – The minute your post is published (e.g. ‘19’)
• %second% – The exact second your post gets published (e.g. ‘12’)
• %post_id% – The unique ID # of your post (e.g. ‘2976’)
• %postname% – A correctly formatted version of your post title. For example, if the post title is “Top Five Budget Travel Tips!”, the postname tag will convert this into “top-five-budget-travel-tips” (all letters converted to lower case and removed punctuation symbols) in the URL. Tip: You can always edit the wording 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 adding the /%postname%/ tag in ‘Custom Structure’.

Permalinks – Optional Settings

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

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

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

For example, changing your category base to “recipes” will make your category links display as ‘http://domain.com/recipes/category_name/’.

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

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

To this …

If you leave these fields blank the default settings will be used.

Remember to save any 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 Short, Descriptive Categories

To get the most benefit out of 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 points to keep in mind if you are wondering whether or not to add categories to your permalinks:

• 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 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 share 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 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 a permalink structure you think will suit your site best. Many SEO experts and webmasters recommend making your web address short enough to be attractive and long enough to be descriptive.

We provide detailed information about WordPress categories in another article.

Create Timeless Posts

Another great tip from Joost de Valk is that unless your site is a news site or there is a special reason why you need to create dated web URLs, avoid using date-based permalink options when setting up your blog’s URLs.

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

Although using permalinks that time-stamp your content is better that using no permalinks at all from an SEO perspective, 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 Permalinks In Site With Many Published Posts

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

If your website is already established or your site already has many 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 making changes to permalinks after your site has been running for a while could create issues and errors.

301 Redirects

As you’ve seen earlier, many website owners (or whoever set up their site) seem to be completely unaware of the search-friendly URLs feature of WordPress.

Maybe when you started out, your site used the default WordPress permalinks and now you want to optimize your site better for search engines. Perhaps your site was originally set up 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 in the URLs.

To edit your permalink structure without negatively affecting your site’s SEO you should add ‘301 redirects’ to reassign links that were set up using the old URL syntax to web addresses using the new permalinks syntax.

A code ‘301’ is interpreted by search engines as a link that has permanently been moved elsewhere. 301 redirection is the most efficient and search engine friendly way to redirect visitors to new web page destinations and avoid ”page not found” errors when they click on an old link.

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

You can site or blog using WP plugins like Simple 301 Redirects, or Redirection, or get a professional to assist you with setting up and redirecting your permalinks correctly to avoid issues and troubleshoot any errors.

(Set up 301 redirects using a WP plugin 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 results. To learn more about using Permalinks, see the WordPress codex here:

http://codex.wordpress.org/Using_Permalinks

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