Wouldn’t it be great if after adding a new page to your website, the following could happen … just from your post address:

• Potential site visitors could quickly tell what the post was about,
• Search engines would be able to discover your posts faster,
• Each post published on your website or blog would have its own unique identifier, making your content 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 your individual posts, categories and other taxonomies (a way to organize things together) like archives.

A permalink is the URL that visitors and search engines use to link to your articles or sections of your site or the links you send in emails pointing readers to your posts. Some people also call permalinks “pretty” URLs.

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

Permalinks – Why Do I Need To Use Them?

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

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

If you are looking to optimize the SEO aspect of your site, then you should not ignore the importance of its URLs. Google tends to give special consideration to the structure of URLs when indexing content.

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

Now … let’s see why it’s best to set up permalinks when publishing content in WordPress.

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

The above link structure is used by WordPress to find data within your database. It does not mean anything to either search engines or visitors, and it doesn’t help your website with on-site search engine optimization.

As the screenshot below shows, many WordPress site owners are still using default settings when publishing content online …

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

To get the best possible SEO benefit from using WordPress 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 gives you the ability to create a custom URL structure for your published posts, so your content can go from this …

To something with an SEO-friendly URL like this …

In this tutorial, you will learn how to configure the Permalinks section of your WordPress site to display posts using search engine-friendly URLs instead of the out-of-the-box URL structure and help every new post you publish on your site automatically get better indexing in Google.

Setting Up WordPress Permalinks

In your WordPress admin menu, select Settings > Permalinks …

This will bring 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 need to specify a different Permalink structure than the default.

Common Settings – Permalinks

In the Common Settings section, select Custom Structure, then add one or more ‘tags’ (see below) to create search engine-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/top-ten-european-river-cruises

Instead of this …

http://www.mytravelsite.com/?p=8669

(Using permalinks helps readers understand what your page is about)

Using Permalink Tags In WordPress

“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. ‘2016’)
• %monthnum% – Month of the year (e.g. ‘08’)
• %day% – Day of the month (e.g. ‘25’)
• %hour% – Hour of the day (e.g. ‘24’)
• %minute% – The minute your post gets published (e.g. ‘55’)
• %second% – Second of the minute (e.g. ‘49’)
• %post_id% – The unique ID # of the post (e.g. ‘1428’)
• %postname% – A sanitized version of your post title. For example, if the post title is ”The Five Don’ts Of DIY Home Repair!”, the postname tag will convert this into “the-five-donts-of-diy-home-repair” (all lower case letters and exclamation marks removed) in the URL. Tip: You can always edit this 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 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

If you need to configure custom structures for your category and tag URLs here is where you would do this.

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

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

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

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

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

To this …

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

Remember to save any 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 Info

Set Up Your Categories

To get the best benefit from 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 a few points 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. 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 or share and decrease the SEO benefit.
• Do you plan to post content under only one category or multiple categories? 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 adding category vs no category there really is no perfect permalink structure to use. Choose a permalink structure you think will suit your needs best. Your post URLs should be short enough to be attractive and long enough to be descriptive.

We cover WordPress categories in other articles.

Avoid Setting Up Permalinks That Time-Stamp Your Posts

Another tip from Joost de Valk is that unless your goal is to run a news site or you have a special reason to create dated post addresses, it’s best to avoid selecting date-based permalink syntax when configuring your URLs.

(Avoid using permalinks that date your content)

Although using URL structures that date your posts may be considered better that using no permalinks at all from an SEO perspective, people 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.

Changing Permalinks In An Established Blog

Normally, your permalinks should be set up when you install a new WordPress site. This should be part of your website 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 absolutely something that needs to be done, as doing so can create SEO issues and errors.

Use 301 Redirects

As you’ve seen in the above screenshots of actual search results, some site owners (or whoever set up their site) seem to be completely unaware of the permalinks feature of WordPress.

Maybe you started out using the default WordPress permalinks and now you want to optimize your site better for search engines. Perhaps your site was configured to display post dates in your URLs and now all of your content is showing as being two or three years old and you want to remove the date tags in the URLs.

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

A ’301′ code is interpreted by search engines as a link that has permanently moved elsewhere. 301 redirects are 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 they click on an old link.

To create an effective syntax change and avoid SEO problems, sending visitors to broken links, etc. you should add a redirection system before messing with the permalink structure of your site.

You can WP site or blog using a 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 issues and troubleshoot any errors.

(Set up link redirections using plugins or get professional help)

Congratulations! Now you know how to configure your WordPress site to display SEO-friendly URLs for your posts and improve your search results. To learn more about using Permalinks, refer to the WordPress codex below:

http://codex.wordpress.org/Using_Permalinks

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