Have you ever heard of Permalinks? Do you know that if you use them in the right way, you can help a lot more people find your articles on the Internet?
What are Permalinks?
Permalinks are the direct and permanent links to individual posts, categories and pages on WordPress blogs. The most common formats are:
–Default: http://www.creativeramblings.com/?p=123 (also known as the Ugly Permalinks)
–Day and Name: http://www.creativeramblings.com/2010/12/26/sample-post/
–Month and Name: http://www.creativeramblings.com/2010/12/sample-post/
–Numeric: http://www.creativeramblings.com/archives/123
To check the Permalink formats, visit your WordPress Admin → Settings → Permalinks.
Benefits of customized Permalinks
In the Permalinks section, you will notice that there is also a custom structure. This structure is the best format for two reasons:
–It is easier for people to remember the URLs to your posts.
–Customized Permalinks only use keywords (usually taken from the title of posts) and, as a result, are very SEO friendly.
Want to use the Custom Structure for your URLs? Add the following in the Permalinks Settings: /%postname%/(look at the picture below for more information).
Example of customized link: http://www.creativeramblings.com/3-tips-to-make-your-facebook-fan-page-stand-out/
Make your old links work
When I started using customized Permalinks, I found myself faced with one major issue: All the URLs of my old posts stopped working! I did some research and discovered the Redirection plugin.
This plugin takes care of 301 redirections and keeps track of link errors. Install it then go to Manage → Redirection → Options. Make sure that URL Monitoring is set to “Modified posts.” Then, you should be set.
Make your Permalinks even more SEO friendly
The SEO Slugs plugin removes words like ‘a’, ‘the’ or ‘in’ from URLs to improve search engine optimization. I like it because the links are shorter and jam-packed with keywords.
Nicely said, Not bad at all! Interesting piece of information.
I find it to be honest, useful and fresh so thank you so much for posting this!
Thanks for the nice article. I never thought it is even better SEO with slug optimization. Btw, the plugin you mentioned (SEO Slugs) seems quite old. I could quickly find another that seems to be recently updated and compatible with WP 3.1
http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/better-seo-slugs/
Thank you, Pranav! I appreciate your input! And thank you for the link.
I just read on WordPress help section that you should NOT use the keyword only versions but should have one of the options with numbers because then WordPress / you can't tell which things are pages and which are posts…?? I'm so confused! :( I have been doing it your way up until now but most of my sites are mostly all posts and not pages.
My recent post Parents Night Out at the Parker Fieldhouse
Probably because it is easier to see which one is a post and which one is a page. But SEO-wise, it is recommended to have keywords to rank high in search engines.