Wouldn’t it be great if after publishing a new post on your website or blog, the following took place … all from your URL:

• Potential site visitors could quickly tell what your page was about,
• Search engines could easily find your posts and correctly index their content for better search rankings,
• Every single content item added to your website or blog would have a unique ID, making your content easier to manage.

Well, with WordPress permalinks you can!

How To Set Up And Use WordPress Permalinks

Permalinks – Definition

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 web address that other people use to link to your articles or sections of your site or the links you send in an email pointing readers to content items on your blog. Permalinks are sometimes referred to as “pretty” URLs.

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

Permalinks – Why Use Them?

Hopefully, by now you are probably aware 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 right out of the box, but there are SEO plugins you can install that can further help to fine tuned its SEO aspect.

If you are looking to optimize the SEO aspect of your site or blog, then you cannot ignore the importance of its site’s URLs. Google places considerable weight on the structure of URLs when indexing pages.

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

Now … let’s turn our attention to the reason why you may need to use permalinks when publishing content in WordPress.

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

The link structure shown above is used by WordPress to locate data inside its database. It doesn’t really mean much to anyone, and it doesn’t help your site with on-site SEO.

As you can see from the screenshot image below, many site owners haven’t yet configured their sites to use permalinks …

Although these sites are getting their content indexed on search engines, they are potentially missing out on extra SEO benefits.

To get the greatest SEO benefit from using WordPress and improve your site’s traffic results, you should configure your permalinks structure to make it more search engine-friendly by displaying relevant keywords in your URL, instead of meaningless characters.

WordPress allows you to create a custom URL structure for your published and archived posts, so your pages can easily go from this …

To something with an SEO-friendly URL like this …

By default, WordPress URLs are not very search engine-friendly. This step-by-step tutorial explains how to configure your WP permalinks to help you get better indexing in search engines.

Configuring 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 “pretty” permalinks instead for our posts. To do this, we will need to specify a different Permalink structure than the default.

Common Permalink 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/cruise-travel/how-to-save-money-on-cruise-travel

Instead of this …

http://www.mytravelsite.com/?p=279

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

How To Create Pretty WordPress URLs

“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. ‘2010’)
• %monthnum% – The month your post gets published (e.g. ‘10’)
• %day% – The day your post is published (e.g. ‘30’)
• %hour% – Hour of the day (e.g. ‘09’)
• %minute% – Minute of the hour (e.g. ‘29’)
• %second% – The exact second your post is published (e.g. ‘27’)
• %post_id% – The unique ID # of the post (e.g. ‘8097’)
• %postname% – A correctly formatted 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 characters and no punctuation marks) in the URL. Tip: You can edit the URL wording 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 the ‘Custom Structure’ option and using the /%postname%/ tag.

Permalinks – Optional Settings

In this section, you can set up custom structures for your tag and category pages.

You can change the ‘base’ category or tag 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 “news” will display your category links as ‘http://domain.com/news/category_name/’.

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

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

To this …

If you leave these fields blank WordPress uses the defaults.

Remember to save any changes when 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

Use Short, Descriptive Categories

To get the greatest 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, WordPress will use the default category (uncategorized).

According to WordPress SEO plugin developer Joost de Valk, here are a few points 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 add the category tag 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 copy and reduce 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 category vs no category there is no ideal permalink structure to use. Use a permalink structure that you think will suit your needs best. Many SEO experts recommend making your web address short enough to be attractive and long enough to be descriptive.

We provide more information about WordPress categories in other tutorials.

Avoid Using Permalinks That Time-Stamp Your Posts

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

(Avoid using permalinks 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 point-of-view, people are less likely to click on posts that are several years old, even if the content is relevant to the answers they are searching for.

What If My Site Has Lots Of Content?

Normally, it’s best to set up your 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.

Use 301 Redirection

As you’ve seen in the above screenshots of actual search results, some WordPress users (or whoever set up their site) seem to be unaware of the permalinks 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 site was configured to display post dates in your URLs and now all of your content is perceived as being outdated and you want to remove the date tags in your permalinks.

To edit your permalink structure without negatively affecting your site’s SEO or existing rankings you should use ‘301 redirects’ to reassign links using the old URL syntax to page URLs that use the new permalinks structure.

Search engines interpret a ’301′ code as a link that has permanently moved to another location. 301 redirects are the most efficient and search engine friendly way to redirect visitors to new website destinations and avoid running into ”page not found” errors when clicking on an old link.

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

You can site using a WP redirection 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 a WordPress plugin or use the services of a professional)

Congratulations! Now you know how to set up your site to display SEO-friendly URLs for your posts. For additional information on using Permalinks, see the official WordPress documentation here:

http://codex.wordpress.org/Using_Permalinks

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