I am going to teach you how to optimize your WordPress permalinks for better On-Page SEO, which is the first thing you need to do as soon as you have installed WordPress on your server. Learn how to create a custom permalink structure for your WordPress powered site, optimize them for Search Engines and why it is important.
1. Default WordPress Permalinks
By default, the WordPress permalinks for your posts and pages are very SEO-Unfriendly and look a bit like this:
http://www.domain.com/?p=1
If you know the basics of on-page SEO then you know how this is a problem. Basically the ending of your URL should contain keywords that reflect the content of that page or post. Not only is this more user-friendly (and looks less sketchy when people share links to your site) but it also helps tell search engines, like Google, what that page should be about (On-Page SEO is all about “Relevance”).
Your permalinks should be something like this:
http://www.domain.com/optimize-wordpress-permalinks
2. Optimizing Your Permalinks
Luckily WordPress does provide a very easy way to optimize your permalink structure. All you have to do is log into your WordPress admin panel and go to the following location:
Settings –> Permalinks
On this page, click on “Custom Structure” and then to the right you’ll want to enter the following:
%postname%
Now your permalinks will be created using keywords from your post or page title.
*If you notice I put a “.html” at the end of mine. I really like it because I have subfolders on my domain and it helps distinguish between the two, but it probably doesn’t do much or anything in terms of Search Engine Optimization.
3. Manually Editing Your Permalinks Per Page Or Post
After you set up your custom permalink structure you can also manually edit your permalinks while creating or editing your posts/pages. This way you can choose the exact words you want for your URL structure. To do so just click on the small “edit” button right under the field where you put in your post/page title (see image below). Makes sure to click “save draft” or “update” after you change it.
4. Advantages Of A Better Permalink Structure
The advantages of optimizing your permalink structure to a keyword-rich one are the following:
- Makes your URL’s easier to read by search engine robots
- Makes your URL easier to read in search engine results (may increase clicks)
- Gives more weight to the words in your URL
5. Quick Tips For Better Permalinks
Changing the permalink structure works pretty well, however, you may want to edit them manually (as explained above) to make them even better then the default. Keep the following tips in mind when optimizing your permalinks.
- Keep them short -hopefully between 1-4
- Keep them relevant – make sure to choose the keywords you want your page or post to rank for(obviously they will be relevant to your content)
- Avoid “fluff’ words – don’t use words like: it, and, of, the…etc.
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