How to Use Permalinks to Enhance Your WordPress SEO Blog
This is the first of the WordPress SEO Tutorials series.
By default, WordPress gives you this dynamic URL for your post: “http://yourdomain.com/?p=SOME-ID-NUMBER”. The best SEO permalink structure is to have your post appears with ‘category’ and the ‘post title’ in the URL.
This looks something like this: “http://yourdomain.com/category/post-title”
Why is this the best SEO permalink structure compares to the other structures?
To simply put, this permalink structure allows you to have ‘more’ keyword loaded into the URL of your post. Since the category that you’ve placed your post under usually related to the post title (which hopefully is keyword-loaded itself), you will have the extra SEO benefit if other people use that permalink structure to link your post.
How to Change the Default Permalinks to ‘Category/Post-Title’ Permalinks
In order to change the default permalink structure, you need to go to “OPTIONS -> Permalinks” in your admin panel and paste this code into the BOX after “Custom Structure:”
/%category%/%postname%/
Next, click the “Update Permalink Structure >>” button; if WordPress does NOT automatically update the permalink structure to for you–don’t worry–just do the following:
-If you don’t have a .htaccess file in your root directory (public_html/.htaccess) already, just ‘create a new file’ and name it .htaccess and place it in “public_html” directory or whatever directory you have your WordPress blog installed (e.g. public_html/blog/.htaccess, which is equivalent to yourdomain.com/blog/.htaccess).
-Then, copy and paste the code WordPress gives you after clicking on the “Update Permalink Structure >>” button into your .htaccess file. *Note: You need to click on the some option (e.g. ‘Edit’) of your .htaccess file to open up a window to paste your permalink code in the file.
The code is same as following if you are using WordPress 2.0 or higher:
RewriteEngine On
RewriteBase /
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteRule . /index.php [L]
Just copy and paste that ‘mod-rewrite’ code into your .htaccess file, save it, and you are DONE!
Now, your old AND new post will automatically carry the category the post is assigned to, plus the title name of that post:
http://yourdomain.com/blog/category/post-title
*Note: That’s the default ‘Post-Slug’ structure after the updated permalink, but if you want to change the name of the ‘post-title’ in the post’s URL, just go to ‘Post-Slug’ (located on the right-hand side of the “Write” page) and input/change to what name you want.
Also, be sure to check out my post on “3 WordPress Plugins to Safely Change Your Permalink Structure” if you’re going to change to your blog’s old permalinks to a new permalink structure.
O.K. Now, that concludes my first WordPress SEO tutorial on permalink structure. If you have any question, just post a comment below…
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[...] my previous post on “WordPress SEO Tutorial: The Best SEO Permalink Structure,” I realize that I had left out a major point to be taken: if you’re changing your old [...]
Nice guide! This definitely is the best permalink type for SEO – dont bother with dates.
Rich Page
Reply to this comment »http://www.rich-page.com
Internet Fanatic
Nice post! must say
I did that at http://www.bontb.com
Reply to this comment »Hey, be sure to check out my post on “3 WordPress Plugins to Safely Change Your Permalink Structure” before proceeding to the change
.
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Reply to this comment »Nice info. But, what happens when you decide to change the names of your category or just be done with some after a while?
I am currently using dates but thinking of switching to the above mentioned permalink structure. Also, how about using UTW tags instead of category?
Reply to this comment »[...] my previous post on “WordPress SEO Tutorial: The Best SEO Permalink Structure,” I realize that I had left out a major point to be taken: if you’re changing your old [...]
What about changing it for the first time? For instance my cat link could be ?cat=23 but then once I put permalinks it goes to 404, because it’s /%category%/
Is there anything that can redirect regular string stucture to the new permalink?
Reply to this comment »[...] http://theseoblogger.com/seo-b.....structure/ [...]
Thanks for your tip,
i have just followed exactly what you have suggested
Reply to this comment »A good point regarding URL structure, check out my SEO beginners guide on SEO Tutorials for other useful tips when building your site.
Reply to this comment »Somehow I will not sugest using category permalink structure if you choose more then two category for one post
Reply to this comment »I have been looking into the best structure and your points make good sense. Many SEO Gurus use the %postname% solely structure. Many others say that might be the best way, but I wonder about the Wordpress info on this:
Using only %postname%
If you use postname as the only element in your permalinks to create a structure such as example.com/post-title, the rewrite rules may make it impossible to access pages such as your stylesheet (which has a similar format) or the /wp-admin/ folder [is this true in WordPress 2.0+ versions?]. It’s best to include some numeric data (e.g. the post ID or date) in the permalink to prevent this from happening. Additionally, WordPress v1.2.x requires the use of a date structure in order for some features, such as the calendar, to function properly. /%year%/%monthnum%/%day%/%postname%/ is always a good start.
What are your thoughts on that?
BJ Carter
Reply to this comment »Webnovate
[...] with old permlink are already in Google’s index then you need to redirect them to new URLS. The SEO blogger has written a quality post about this [...]
Does your permalink structure really matter? According to the people at Stompernet Google doesn’t care about that. Maybe other search engines do.
Reply to this comment »[...] The SEO Blogger, they are making a sound point about the importance of getting the post’s name in the [...]
[...] struktur Day and name dan Month and name adalah yang bagus, tetapi ada pula yang mengatakan bahwa Custom Structure yang paling bagus, karena kita dapat mengkostumisasi sendiri dari permalink [...]
I’ve also created a structure with /%post_id%/%postname% in line with Wordpress’ advice to including numbers.
http://www.harleytherapy.co.uk.....-recession
I’ve also heard that creating an extension .htm is beneficial too e.g. http://www.harleytherapy.co.uk.....ession.htm
Any one found this too?
Reply to this comment »Thanks for the tutorial. It’s of great help.
Reply to this comment »One of the latest link building fads seem to be commenting on peoples blogs. Now personally I think this is a good idea, everyone seems to be a winner, blog want reader, SEO want link from multiple different blogs. Everyones happy. (It does tend to create a whole loads of complete rubbish conversation completely built to get post by hay no victims there).
Reply to this comment »I am using this tip at my site Breaking Jist but what is the “extra SEO benefit” to this?
Reply to this comment »I’m going for /%postname%/ on most of my WP sites but can imagine including categories could be usefuk for catching more search terms if you choose the category names wisely.
Reply to this comment »I’m not sure if this Permalink structure is really the best.
When you use /%category%/%postname%/ SE’s and web browser would treat it as a directory rather than a page. In my opinion Google gives more priority to a content rich “page” than a directory.
The page loads slowly on older browser when you use directory structure! Instead if you use /%category%/%postname%.html the browser will request the exact page.
One more point; if your domain name contains your main keyword then there is no need to add /%category%/ to your URL. The domain name, directory name and URL will have your keywords…so it might look like over optimization for Google.
One of my sites got penalized by Google after I changed my Permalink!
So be careful
Reply to this comment »RB
[...] my previous post on “WordPress SEO Tutorial: The Best SEO Permalink Structure,” I realize that I had left out a major point to be taken: if you’re changing your old [...]
[...] The SEO Blogger also recommends only using /%postname%/ as the permalink [...]
So what is the best structure permalink?
Reply to this comment »I like the idea using : index.php/%category%/%postname%
[...] WordPress SEO Tutorial: The Best SEO Permalink Structure [...]
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Hey, thanks for the article…
Just thought I’d throw in my $0.02 here… My experience tells me that the /%category%/ in the permalink structure is not the best. This is because it pushes the ‘meat’ of the keywords for that post further down into the URL, making those keywords valued less.
Let me give an example. Say you’re trying to rank for “the best free iphone games” … it would be better for that URL to be:
http://www.yoursite.com/the-be.....one-games/
than for it to be:
http://www.yoursite.com/iphone.....one-games/
Again, this is personal experience. We’ve used both methods and found without /%category%/ to be more effective… This holds true for ‘long tail’ searches like the one above, as well as for shorter 2-word phrases… (To the best of my knowledge, our site doesn’t rank for any 1 word phrases… maybe one day
Reply to this comment »Well one more point, I didn’t mention is to keep your resource URL short e.g. don’t go over board like “http://yoursite.com/long-category-name-title-url/long-blog-post-title.html”
The fix for “long-category-name-title-url” is pretty easy, just keep your “Long Category Name Title URL” name, but change the slug to “short-category-slug”.
One more thing, try to use less forward slashes “/” in your URL. For example, instead of “/ %post_title% / %post_id%”, use “”/%post_title% – %post_id%”. (See how the “/” is changed to “-”?).
Also, the permalink structure depends on the type of site you are building, e.g. for magazine/news site, it’s better to use “/%post_title%” (and maybe date in the URL).
*Last caveat note: part of the reason why I recommend “/%category%/%post_title%” permalink structure is because it helps the reader get an idea on what the topic of the page will be (and it shows hierarchical organization as well
.
Reply to this comment »you will have the extra SEO benefit if other people use that permalink structure to link your post.
Reply to this comment »[...] làm v?i permalink c?a WordPress ?? ??t ???c m?c ?ích SEO cao nh?t. N?u ??c qua nhi?u blog, b?n s? ???c h??ng d?n ?? ch?n 1 trong các lo?i permalink sau [...]
Using permalinks for SEO is a good idea because search engines do use the words in the URL for ranking purposes. There is a contrary point of view how to do this from Search Engine News (Planet Ocean) that everyone should be aware of. SEN says that you don’t want the category title in the URL because it adds an extra / mark and makes the URL longer. Spiders look at the number of / you have in your URL. The more you have, the less effective the URL. That’s why they recommend the domain.com/title of post format. Then you only have one / which will improve spidering.
This is how I do the permalinks on my blogs. I also custom edit the permalinks instead of letting Wordpress automatically configure them from the title.
Hope this helps,
Don
Reply to this comment »Thanks for the tip! I’ve been wondering about the best permalink structure for Wordpress. I normally use /%postname%/ only but now I will use /%category%/%postname%/.
Reply to this comment »tnx for this usefol tips i change my permalink to %postname% and it looks nice
Reply to this comment »Awww ! Nice.. I just put this in my .htaccess
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thanks for your tips and suggestion after a long time i read this type of article. thanks again.
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Reply to this comment »This is brillient. Thanks for this. A great tutorial.
Reply to this comment »nice, i like use this permalinks structure /%category%/%postname%/
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Reply to this comment »This is very important for each and everyone of us who are doing SEO for any reasons.
Reply to this comment »What is the best permalink to be in Google News?
Reply to this comment »Try taking SEO in house and saving some money. Good old fashion do-it-yourself. It’s not hard, you just need a little guidance.
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