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…

None Found

This has to do with URL canonicalization. What’s URL canonicalization you ask?

According to the head of Google’s Webspam team, Matt Cutts, URL canonicalization is “the process of picking the best url when there are several choices”:

* www.The SEO Blogger.com (same as www.The SEO Blogger.com)
* The SEO Blogger.com (same as http://The SEO Blogger.com)
* www.The SEO Blogger.com/index.php
* The SEO Blogger.com/home.asp

Most people think that those are the same, but on technical term, they are NOT!

*Can you see how the URLs are different, even though they may serve up the same web page?

Luckily, after a major update to “Big Daddy,” Google now is able to detect which one is the best URL for you/your website. However, you do have to help Big Daddy in the process.

How do you help make sure Google pick the URL that you want?

Well, for your internal linking, the URL that you use should be ‘consistent’. For example, if I’m planning to use “http://The SEO Blogger.com” as the consistent URL form for all of my EXTERNAL inbound links, it’s wise to use that URL form in ALL my internal linkings, as well. And, as you can see, I have done just that.

*Note: the reason you don’t want to have half of your links pointing to “http://yourdomain.com” and the other half to “http://www.yourdomain.com” is because you do NOT want to split the value of those links up. You want to have one ‘consistent’ URL form, so that your website (page rank) will receive the FULL benefits of ALL the links, not just HALF of them.

–But here’s the problem, you only have control over the URL form of those external/internal links if you are the one who’s placing those links (URL form). For many other people who link to your website, you cannot control which URL forms (http://www. or http://) they will link to you.

Thus, in order to receive FULL benefit of consistent URL, you need to set up a 301 permanent redirect from one URL form to another, which is pretty easy–as shown below:

Using Mod Rewrite to Redirect “Non-www” URL (http://) to “www” URL (http://www.)

In order to do this, you must have access to the .htaccess file via FTP or CPanel File Manager. Most Apache web server (Linux hosting) has this .htaccess file. If not, you can create and name the new file .htaccess and place it inside the root directory of your domain (e.g. public_html/.htaccess).

You must edit/add the following mod-rewrite script to your .htaccess file to redirect “http://” to “http://www.”:

RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} !^www..*
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} !^$
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^([^.]*).(com|com/)
RewriteRule ^.*$ www.%1.%2%{REQUEST_URI} [R=301,L]

The above script will redirect:

http://yourdomain.com to http://www.yourdomain.com

Redirecting “www” URL (http://www.) to “Non-www” URL (http://)

This is the simple mod rewrite script I use to redirect “http://www.The SEO Blogger.com” to “http://The SEO Blogger.com“:

RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^www.TheSEOBlogger.com [nc]
RewriteRule (.*) TheSEOBlogger.com/$1 [R=301,L]

*Note: you should change “The SEO Blogger.com” to YOUR WEBSITE NAME! Also, if you have sub-domains, the above script will also work. Also, by ‘default’, I think WordPress gives your site URL as “http://www.yoursite.com.” If you want your site to be in “http://” URL form, you, of course, have to go to “OPTION ->General” and update your site URL to “http://yoursite.com” instead of “http://www.yoursite.com.”

Anyway, here is a live demo of those two scripts at work:

http://mint-tree.com >>> www.mint-tree.com
http://www.TheSEOBlogger.com >>> TheSEOBlogger.com

By using either one of these mod-rewrite scripts, you can have a consistent URL in your linking campaign. Now, you don’t have to worry what URL form others have used to link to your website. Now “http://” and “http://www.” are ‘consistently’ the same, although I think “http://” is a better URL form for your SEO linking campaign, just because that form is SHORTER than “http://www.” .

None Found