Wouldn’t it be great if you could simply publish a new page on your website or blog, and the following would then take place … just from your URL:

• Site visitors could tell what your content was about,
• Google would discover your pages faster,
• Each content item added to your website or blog would have its own unique identifier, making things 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 an individual post, category, or other taxonomy (a way to organize things together) like archives.

A permalink is the web address that visitors and search engines will use to link to your articles or sections of your site or the links you send in an email pointing readers to articles on your site. Permalinks are often referred to as “pretty” URLs.

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

Permalinks – Why Use Them?

Hopefully, you probably know by now that, WordPress is one of the best Content Management Systems available when it comes to publishing search optimized content.

WordPress is not only great for SEO out of the box, but there are excellent SEO plugins you can use that can further help to fine tuned its SEO aspect.

If you are looking to optimize the SEO aspect of your site, then you cannot ignore the importance of your site’s URLs. Google tends to pay special attention to the URL structure of a site.

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

Now … let’s see why it’s best to configure your permalinks in WordPress.

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

WordPress uses the above link with a string query to find information inside its database. It does not mean much to anyone, and it doesn’t help your site with on-site search engine optimization.

As you can see from the screenshot below, many site owners are still using out of the box permalink settings when publishing their content online …

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

To get the best possible SEO benefit out of using and improve your site’s rankings, 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 lets you create a custom URL structure for your published posts, so your content can easily go from this …

To something with an SEO-friendly URL like this …

Out of the box, WordPress post URLs are not very search engine-friendly. In this step-by-step tutorial, you will learn how to set up your WordPress permalinks to get better indexing results in Google.

Setting Up WordPress Permalinks

In your WordPress dashboard click on, 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 search engine friendly URL instead for our posts. To do this, we will need to specify a different Permalink structure than the one set by default.

Permalinks > 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/budget-cruises/how-to-save-money-on-cruise-travel

Instead of this …

http://www.mytravelsite.com/?p=3401

(Using permalinks helps readers and search engines understand what your content is about)

SEO-Friendly 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. ‘2010’)
• %monthnum% – The month your post gets published (e.g. ‘08’)
• %day% – Day of the month (e.g. ‘20’)
• %hour% – Hour of the day (e.g. ‘21’)
• %minute% – Minute of the hour (e.g. ‘43’)
• %second% – The exact second your post gets published (e.g. ‘26’)
• %post_id% – The unique ID # of your post (e.g. ‘8475’)
• %postname% – A sanitized version of your 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 no exclamation marks) in the URL. Tip: You can always edit the words 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’.

Optional Permalink Settings

In this section, you can enter custom structures for your category and tag URLs.

You can change 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, using “recipes” as your category base will display your category links as ‘http://domain.com/recipes/uncategorized/’.

So, if you make the following change 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 WordPress uses the defaults.

Remember to save your 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 Notes

Set Up Categories

To get more SEO benefit from using Permalinks, it’s important 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 plugin developer Joost de Valk, here are some things to consider if you are wondering whether you should add categories to your permalink structure or not:

• 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 and decrease 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.

Ultimately, when it comes to adding category vs no category there is no ”better” permalink structure to use. Choose a permalink structure that you think will suit your site best. Many SEO experts and webmasters recommend making your post URLs short enough to be attractive and long enough to be descriptive.

We cover WordPress categories in other tutorials.

Don’t Use Date Permalinks

Another tip from Joost de Valk is that unless your site provides news, or there is a special reason why you need to create dated post URLs, it’s best to avoid choosing date-based permalink options for your URLs.

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

Although setting up URL structures that time-stamp your posts may be considered better that using no permalinks at all from an SEO perspective, visitors 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 Indexed Posts?

Normally, it’s best to configure your site’s permalinks when you first install WordPress. This should be part of your site planning process.

If your website or blog is already established 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 something that absolutely needs doing, as changing permalinks after your site has been running for a while can create issues and errors.

301 Redirects

As you’ve seen in the above screenshots of actual search results, some site owners (or their web developers) seem to be completely unaware of the search-friendly URLs feature of WordPress.

Maybe you started out using the default WordPress URL structure and now you would like to optimize your site better for search engines. Maybe your website was configured 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 tags in the permalinks.

To change your permalink structure without negatively affecting your site’s SEO or rankings you should add ‘301 redirects’ to point all links using the previous permalink structure to links that use the new permalink structure.

A code ‘301’ is interpreted by search engines as a link that has permanently moved. 301 redirects are the most efficient and search engine friendly way to redirect users to new web page destinations and avoid running into ”page not found” errors when following an old link.

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

You can add a link redirection system to your do this using a WordPress redirection plugin like Simple 301 Redirects, or Redirection, or get a professional to help you set up and redirect your permalinks correctly to avoid any issues 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 search engine-friendly URLs for your posts. To learn more about using Permalinks, see the official WordPress documentation below:

http://codex.wordpress.org/Using_Permalinks

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