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

• Potential site visitors could easily gain an understanding of what your content is about,
• Google would be able to discover your posts faster,
• Every single item of content on your site 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

Permalinks – Definition

A permalink is the permanent URL to an individual WordPress post, category, or other taxonomy (a way to organize things together) like archives.

A permalink is the web address that visitors and search engines use to link to articles or sections of your site or the links you send in an email pointing readers to posts on your site. Some people also refer to permalinks as “pretty” URLs.

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

Why Use Permalinks?

Hopefully, you are probably aware that, WordPress is one of the best CMS applications available when it comes to SEO.

WordPress is not only well optimized straight out of the box, but there are excellent SEO plugins you can use that can further help to finetune its SEO aspect.

If you focus on the SEO aspect of your site, then you cannot ignore the importance of its URLs. Google tends to give special consideration to the structure of URLs when indexing content.

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 take a look at why you should set up permalinks when publishing content in WordPress.

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

WordPress uses the above link with a string query to find data within 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 image below shows, many WordPress users haven’t configured their sites to use WordPress permalinks …

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

To get more SEO benefit from using and improve your site’s traffic results, 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 allows you to create a custom URL structure for your published and archived posts, so your pages can easily go from this …

To something like this …

In this step-by-step tutorial, you will learn how to configure your WordPress permalinks to display posts with SEO-friendly URLs instead of the default URL structure and help every new post you add automatically get better indexing in Google.

Changing WordPress Permalinks

Log into your WP dashboard and select Settings > Permalinks …

This will bring 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 a “pretty” permalink 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/europe-travel/river-cruise-holiday-deals

Instead of this …

http://www.mytravelsite.com/?p=1458

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

Pretty 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 your post is published, displayed as four digits (e.g. ‘2017’)
• %monthnum% – Month of the year (e.g. ‘12’)
• %day% – Day of the month (e.g. ‘27’)
• %hour% – Hour of the day (e.g. ‘16’)
• %minute% – Minute of the hour (e.g. ‘09’)
• %second% – Second of the minute (e.g. ‘53’)
• %post_id% – The unique ID # of your post (e.g. ‘9456’)
• %postname% – A correctly formatted version of the post title. For example, if your post title is ”Ten Best Hotels In Cote D’Azur!”, the postname tag will convert this into “ten-best-hotels-in-cote-dazur” (all lower case characters and no punctuation marks) in the URL. Tip: You can edit this text 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 adding the /%postname%/ tag in the ‘Custom Structure’ setting.

Optional Permalink Settings

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

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

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

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

To this …

If you leave the optional settings fields blank the defaults will be used.

Remember to save your changes after 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 – Tips

Set Up Your Categories

To get the greatest benefit from using Permalinks, remember 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 and author of the WordPress SEO plugin 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 copy and reduce the SEO benefit.
• If you are going to post content under multiple categories, then we recommend not using the category tag in your permalink structure.

Ultimately, when it comes to adding category vs no category there really is no ”better” permalink structure to use. Use the permalink structure that 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 other articles.

Avoid Using Permalinks That Time-Stamp Your Content

Another great tip from Joost de Valk is that unless your site is a news blog or there is a special reason why you need to add dates to your post URLs, avoid selecting date-based permalink settings when setting up your site’s URLs.

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

Although using URL structures that time-stamp your content may be considered better that using no permalinks at all from an SEO perspective, visitors are less likely to click on posts that are several years old, even if the content is relevant to what they are searching for.

What If My Blog Has Lots Of Content?

Normally, your site’s permalinks should be set up when you install a new WordPress site. This should be part of your site 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 would like to change the permalink structure, make sure that this is something that absolutely needs doing, as doing so could create SEO issues and errors.

Use 301 Redirects

As you’ve seen earlier, some site owners (or their web developers) are 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 or blog was configured to display post dates in your URLs and now all of your content is showing as being old and you want to remove the date portion of the permalinks.

The best way to edit your URL structure without impacting your site’s SEO or rankings in a negative way is to use ‘301 redirections’ to point all links that use the old permalinks structure to page URLs using the new permalinks syntax.

Search engines interpret a code ‘301’ as a link that has permanently moved elsewhere. 301 redirection is the most effective and search engine friendly way to redirect users to new web page destinations and avoid running into ‘404’ (Page not found) errors if following an old link.

To create an effective permalink structure change and avoid damaging your search rankings, sending visitors to broken links, etc. you should set up your 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 problems and troubleshoot any errors.

(Set up a link redirection system for your changed permalinks 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 results. For additional information on using Permalinks, refer to the official WordPress documentation below:

http://codex.wordpress.org/Using_Permalinks

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