Wouldn’t it be great if you could simply add content to your WordPress website or blog, and the following took place … all from your page URL:

• Potential visitors to your site could glean what your page was about,
• Search engines would be able to find your pages faster,
• Each post on your website would have its own unique ID, making your site easier to manage.

Well, with permalinks you can!

How To Set Up And Use WordPress Permalinks

Permalinks – Definition

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

A permalink is the web address that others will use to link to your posts or sections of your site or the links you send in emails pointing readers to content items on your website. Permalinks are often called “pretty” URLs.

Permalinks make the URLs to each post on your site permanent, hence a perma-link.

Why Use Permalinks?

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

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

If you focus on the SEO aspect of your site or blog, then you should not ignore the importance of its site’s URLs. Google tends to give special significance to the URL structure of your site.

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

Now … let’s see the reason why it’s best to use permalinks if publishing content in WordPress.

By default, a WordPress installation uses a URL-naming structure for your posts that isn’t search engine friendly and looks like this …

WordPress uses the link structure with a string query shown above to find data within your database. It does not help your website with on-site SEO.

As you can see from the screenshot image below taken directly from Google search listings, many site owners haven’t configured their sites to use permalinks …

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

To get the best SEO benefit from using and improve your site’s rankings, you should set up your permalinks structure to make it more SEO-friendly by displaying relevant keywords in your URL, instead of meaningless numbers and symbols.

WordPress offers you the ability to create a custom URL structure for your published posts, so your content can easily go from something that is non-SEO friendly like this …

To something 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 configure your permalinks in WordPress to help your content get better indexing results in search engines.

Setting Up WordPress Permalinks

From your WordPress main menu, select 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 will need to specify a different Permalink structure than the default one.

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 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/cruise-holiday-deals

Instead of this …

http://www.mytravelsite.com/?p=9160

(Using post name permalinks helps readers understand what your post is about)

Adding Search Engine-Friendly Tags In Custom Structure

“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 gets published, four digits (e.g. ‘2015’)
• %monthnum% – Month of the year (e.g. ‘11’)
• %day% – The day your post gets published (e.g. ‘08’)
• %hour% – Hour of the day (e.g. ‘05’)
• %minute% – The minute the post gets published (e.g. ‘06’)
• %second% – Second of the minute (e.g. ‘55’)
• %post_id% – The unique ID # of the post (e.g. ‘9907’)
• %postname% – A sanitized version of your post title. For example, if the 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 removed punctuation symbols) in the URL. Tip: You can always edit the URL 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 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 selecting the ‘Custom Structure’ option and adding the /%postname%/ tag.

Optional Permalink Settings

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

This changes the ‘base’ tag or category 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 “topics” will make your category links display as ‘http://domain.com/topics/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 something like this …

If you leave the optional settings fields blank WordPress uses the default settings.

Remember to save any 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 – Additional Notes

Use Descriptive Categories

To get the optimal 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 a few things to keep in mind if you are wondering whether or not to add categories to your permalinks:

• If your category slug is short and descriptive (e.g. adds a relevant keyword or keyword phrase to your URL), 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 or copy and reduce the SEO benefit.
• If you plan to post content under multiple categories, then we recommend not using 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 you think will suit your site best. Many SEO experts 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 tutorials.

Make Your Posts Timeless

Another useful tip from Joost de Valk is that unless your site provides news or time-specific information, or you have a special reason to date your content, it’s best to avoid choosing date-based permalink settings when setting up your URLs.

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

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

What If My Site Already Has Published Content?

Normally, it’s best to set up your site’s permalinks when you install a new WordPress site. This should be part of your site planning process.

If your website or blog 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 doing so can create SEO issues and loss of traffic.

Use 301 Redirection

As you’ve seen earlier, some website owners (or whoever set up their site) seem to be completely unaware of the permalinks feature of WordPress.

Maybe when you started, your site used the default WordPress URL structure and now you would like to optimize your site better for search engines. Maybe your site was originally set up to display post dates in your web address and now all of your posts are showing as being old and you want to remove the date tags of the URLs.

The best way to edit your URL structure without negatively impacting your site’s SEO or existing rankings is to add ‘301 redirects’ to reassign all links set up using the old permalink syntax to destinations using the new permalink structure.

A ’301′ code is interpreted by search engines as a link that has been permanently relocated to another address. 301 redirection is the most effective and search engine friendly way to redirect users to new web page destinations and avoid running into page errors when clicking on an old link.

To effectively change your permalink structure and avoid damaging your search rankings, sending visitors to broken links, etc. you should set up a redirection system before changing the permalink structure of your site.

You can add a link redirection system to your do this 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 any problems and troubleshoot any errors.

(Set up 301 redirections using a WordPress redirection plugin or get professional help)

Congratulations! Now you know about the built-in system WordPress uses to display search engine-friendly URLs for your posts. For additional information on using Permalinks, see the WordPress codex below:

http://codex.wordpress.org/Using_Permalinks

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