Wouldn’t it be great if you could simply add a new page to your WordPress website or blog, and the following took place … just from your post address:

• New visitors could quickly assess what the content was about,
• Search engines would be able to easily find your pages and correctly index their content for better search rankings,
• Every single piece of content published on your site would have a unique identifier, making your content easier to manage.

Well, with permalinks this is very easy to 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 group things together) like archives.

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

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

Permalinks – Why Use Them?

Hopefully, you are probably aware that, WordPress is one of the best CMS applications you can use when it comes to publishing search optimized content.

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

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

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

Now … let’s review the reason why it’s best to set up permalinks in WordPress.

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

WordPress uses the link with a string query shown above to locate data inside your database. It doesn’t really mean much to anyone, and it doesn’t help your website with on-site SEO.

As the screenshot from Google search listings below shows, many WordPress site owners have not yet configured their sites to use WordPress permalinks …

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

To get the maximum SEO benefit from using WordPress and improve your site’s rankings, you should set up your permalinks structure to make it more search engine-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 …

By default, WordPress post URLs are not very search engine-friendly. This step-by-step tutorial explains how to set up the Permalinks section of your WordPress site to help your content rank better in Google.

Setting Up Your WordPress Permalinks

Log into your WordPress admin 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 one set by default.

Common Settings – Permalinks

In the Common Settings section, select Custom Structure, then add one or more ‘tags’ (see below) to create SEO-friendly URLs …

(Set up 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/travel-deals/how-to-save-money-on-cruise-travel

Instead of this …

http://www.mytravelsite.com/?p=4950

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

WordPress Permalink Tags

“Pretty” URLs, 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. ‘2016’)
• %monthnum% – Month of the year (e.g. ‘08’)
• %day% – Day of the month (e.g. ‘05’)
• %hour% – Hour of the day (e.g. ‘02’)
• %minute% – The minute the post gets published (e.g. ‘16’)
• %second% – The exact second your post gets published (e.g. ‘04’)
• %post_id% – The unique ID # of the post (e.g. ‘2498’)
• %postname% – A sanitized version of the 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 characters and removed exclamation symbols) in the URL. Tip: You can always 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 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 choosing the ‘Custom Structure’ option and adding the /%postname%/ tag.

Permalinks – Optional Settings

If you need to set up custom permalinks for your tag and category pages you can do this in this section.

This changes the ‘base’ category or tag for 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” will display your category links as ‘http://domain.com/news/uncategorized/’.

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

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

To something like this …

If you leave these fields blank WordPress uses the defaults.

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 Information

Set Up Your Categories

To get the greatest SEO benefit out of using Permalinks, it’s important 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 you should add categories to your permalink structure or not:

• If 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 reduce 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 it’s recommended that you do not use the category tag in your permalink structure.

Despite being the subject of intense debate in WordPress SEO circles, when it comes to category vs no category there really is no perfect permalink structure to use. Use 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 another article.

Avoid Setting Up Permalinks That Time-Stamp Your Content

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

(Avoid using permalinks that date your content)

Although using URL structures that time-stamp your posts may be considered better that using no permalinks at all from an SEO aspect, visitors 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 Content?

Normally, it’s best to set up your permalinks when you create 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 can create SEO issues and loss of traffic.

Use 301 Redirects

As you’ve seen in the above screenshots of actual search results, some WordPress site owners (or their web developers) are unaware of the permalinks feature of WordPress.

Maybe when you started out, your site used the default WordPress URL structure and now you want to improve your SEO. Perhaps your website or blog was configured to display post dates in your URLs and now all of your posts are showing as being two or three years old and you want to remove the date tags in your URLs.

To change your permalink structure without negatively affecting your site’s SEO or existing rankings you should add ‘301 redirects’ to reassign all links using the previous URL syntax to web addresses using the new structure.

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 visitors to new website destinations and avoid ”page not found” errors if clicking on an old link.

To create an effective syntax change and avoid damaging your rankings, sending visitors to broken links, etc. you will need to configure a redirection system before changing the permalink structure of your site.

You can site using a redirection plugin like Simple 301 Redirects, or Redirection, or get a professional to assist you with setting up and redirecting your permalinks correctly to avoid any problems and troubleshoot any errors.

(Set up a link redirection system using plugins or use the services of a professional)

Congratulations! Now you know how to set up your WordPress permalinks 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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