Creating Permalinks
Have you met this cute little box in your WordPress write post/page screen? It’s a simple little box really and sometimes, when collapsed it’s easy to pass up.
But it holds a very special value and it’s one that should not be overlooked when you’re working to create the next best blog in the world (or not and just want your blog to be seen).
When you’re using a permalink structure that displays the name of your post in the URL, it’s post slug that’ll work best for you.
(And just for the record, the default permalink structure that WordPress uses is not best for SEO).
There are two permalink structures that I prefer:
http://www.imbloggingthat.com/2007/12/22/sample-post/
You’ll see in this permalink structure, the URL for your blog post or page displays your URL, the year, the month, the date, and post name.
http://www.imbloggingthat.com/2007/12/sample-post/
In this permalink structure your URL, year, month, and post name are displayed.
As a matter of personal opinion, for SEO purposes your blog post or page URL should always display the page/post title or a portion thereof. This can also be done but creating a custom permalink structure that works best for you.
And here is where post slug will help you.
If the name of your blog post, for example is: The Best Plugins for WordPress the URL output using the first permalink structure example will show the following URL for this post:
http://imbloggingthat.com/2007/12/23/the-best-plugins-for-wordpress
Now, when Google crawls your site you’ll have the chance at being indexed when someone searches “the best plugins for wordpress” or “plugins for wordpress.”
Knowing that the default output for this post will read as above, the post slug will give you the opportunity to change what the URL output is for any post.
So instead of having the-best-plugins-for-wordpress, perhaps you’d like plugins-for-wordpress or wordpress-plugins, all very keyword rich.
By typing in this post slug box “wordpress-plugins,” you’re changing the default permalink structure for this post.
So, why is this important?
I’m sure that you’ve heard over and over about organic search traffic and this simply means that someone went to Google (or any search engine), typed in a phrase and poof there you were! That is organic traffic.
You weren’t linked to, you weren’t found on a blogroll: a simple search term or phrase brought the visitor to your site.
To get your search keywords you can use meta tags, you can use headers, and you can use permalink structures (along with many, many other things).
So, knowing that search engines are looking at your titles and page URL’s, it’s important to remember structure and title names when you’re building your blog.
It’s just a thought
By the way, if you’re using the default permalink structure in WordPress:
http://www.imbloggingthat.com/?p=123
This can be changed. And the truth is, if you change your permalink structure if someone visits an old URL, by default WordPress will redirect to the correct URL and still display your page.
The catch: if you have any pages (other than your index) that have PageRank, by changing your permalink structure you WILL lose that PageRank (because you’ve changed the URL of that page).
So remember, next post you write, that post slug is important and is the follow-up to how you title those posts. Keep in mind what you want that URL to read and you’ll get a better handle on how to title and use post slug.
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December 25th, 2007 at 4:16 am
it’s important to remember structure and title names when we’re building our blog.
December 25th, 2007 at 8:39 am
Agreed! But even if you learn about the importance a little late, it’s never too late to correct the structure. :o)
December 26th, 2007 at 7:07 am
Good points Katy, thanks for sharing!
December 26th, 2007 at 9:57 am
Thank you and you’re very welcome. :o)
December 31st, 2007 at 1:44 pm
Thanks! I love learning what all those dang boxes are for in WordPress! I’m slow, but eventually I get there. :-D
January 1st, 2008 at 8:56 am
You’re very welcome. I’ll be doing more tutorials about WordPress so make sure you check back! :o)
January 1st, 2008 at 4:18 pm
Good post, Katy. Enjoyed it :)
January 1st, 2008 at 4:27 pm
Thank you.
January 2nd, 2008 at 9:12 am
[...] endless amounts of information that she shares in a no-nonsense manner. Her posts such as “Creating Permalinks” shares common sense information on why the structure is important but also how to do it. For [...]
January 13th, 2008 at 4:35 pm
[...] my permalink structure is new and some of my pages are as new as today, those are the only two pages that I have found [...]
February 28th, 2008 at 11:47 am
[...] Note: I also used a different post slug so that I could pack more punch with my post. The URL for this post (as defined by my post slug) is [...]
August 30th, 2008 at 7:25 am
Excellent site, added to favorites!!0
March 17th, 2009 at 10:27 am
lack of technical knowledge hard to understand permalink structure but you made it quite easy … quite informative article.
September 1st, 2010 at 4:35 pm
I love how simple this is to do on y blog once you've described it! Thanks!