An important part of good SEO, and general usability of your blog is the permalink structure on your blog. You know, the nonsense in your address bar that takes you from website to website. In WordPress, a permalink structure is often set after installing blog for the first time. Then, it is most likely never touched again. But, did you choose the right structure for your blog?
By default, WordPress sets your permalink structure to http://domain.com/?p=123. In other words “ugly permalinks.” Most bloggers are sensible enough to change this to a more “prettier” solution. Luckily it is simple to change a permalink structure and can be done from your admin panel (Settings → Permalinks).
The Importance of a Good Permalink Structure
I have seen it all too many times – a blogger choosing their permalink structure when they first start their blog, only to realize months later they chose poorly. A bad structure can have an effect on your site almost as ugly as the permalink is itself.
What’s so important about a good structure?
- They do have an impact on the SEO of an article.
- The more readable it is by a human, the easier it is for a search engine to read it.
- It’s part of what “good blog navigation” is about.
- Clean structures make it easier to link back to old articles for both yourself and others.
- It even adds a bit of a professional look to your blog.
A pretty permalink structure is not something that has a huge impact on the success of your blog. It’s not something that will very often turn people away from reading your blog either. You can almost consider this a “minor detail,” but like minor details in design – they are worth perfection.
Best Permalink Practices
There are three main characteristics of what I would consider a good permalink structure to have. They are all simple and easy to achieve, so you shouldn’t have too much trouble keeping up with them as you write more and more blog posts.
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Filled with keywords
A good permalink structure will have keywords in it. If you write a post called How to build your very own bookshelf from scratch, the words build, bookshelf and even yourself should be in it. Those are keywords, and are worth spending the extra 10 seconds to come up with, even if they only have a minimal impact on SEO.
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Clean
A clean permalink structure uses only what it needs to use and nothing more. No extra words, no extensions (.php, .html, etc.) and doesn’t have any useless information like the date or post number in it.
It is worth mentioning that words such as “is,” “it,” “the,” “then,” “a/an” etc. are left out of your permalinks. Really focus on including a few keywords only.
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Short
The fewer words you can use, the better it usually looks. Shorter links are what most search engines prefer to look at when scanning your site, and makes it easier for other people to link back to you in articles of their own.
The stronger keywords, the cleaner and shorter you make your URL’s, the more optimized your site will be for all of the benefits I mentioned at the start of this article.
Depending on the permalink structure you chose, you may or may not follow those practices above. There are certain options WordPress gives you when choosing your permalinks that can really interfere with those 3 principles above.
Common Structures
Below are the most common permalink structures I have seen throughout the blogosphere. The structure you choose can be for plenty of different reasons. You can choose it out of personal preference (you like the look), or you just see one structure to be the best for your blog. The amount of content your blog has can actually have an impact on your decision.
http://domain.com/post-name/
This is one of the most common, cleanest ways to display your permalinks. I highly recommend you have the title of your post included in your permalink. If nothing else, this is all you need for a good permalink. Believe it or not, I have seen bloggers exclude this from their permalinks, and the URL’s were probably unbearable to work with.http://domain.com/category/post-name/
This is the structure I use here, and my favorite. This is a structure you will see on more high-content blogs, and is probably the best choice for blogs like that. It keeps things a little more organized, and can maximize the SEO of your permalink.http://domain.com/year/month/day/post-name
This is my least favorite permalink structure. It adds a lot of clutter to the permalink, and can make it longer than it needs to be. In my personal opinion, it’s best to advertise the date of the article as little as you can (I include the date AFTER the article) if you write timeless content. Sometimes when people see a date on an old post, they may doubt it is still relevant, when it could very well be.
Now, there are many other ways you can organize your permalinks. The WordPress Codex lists quite a few tags you can include in your permalinks. I can’t believe people would even consider adding the minute or second the post was published into their permalink. But, if you want – it’s possible (but stupid).
Changing Your Permalink Structure
This is where things get messy. If you are that blogger who has written hundreds of articles and then want to change the permalink to them, you might be in a little trouble.
It’s not that it isn’t easy to change the permalink. All you need to do is change the tags you want included in your structure from your Permalinks options page. But, when that happens, you will have a lot of broken URL’s throughout your blog.
Look at it this way:
If your want to change your permalink structure from http://domain.com/year/month/day/post-name to http://domain.com/category/post-name/, you will have an entirely different URL. The article will still be accessible, just not through the same URL. And this causes problems in search engines because the old URL will be indexed, not your new one.
That means, you could lose quite a bit of traffic to your blog.
Resources for Changing Your Permalinks
This often takes a couple of steps to do, but there are safe ways to change your permalink structure without losing a single visitor. Bruce Keener did it, and even wrote about it. So, it is very possible to change your permalinks at any time without harming your traffic.
Here are some useful resources I found about doing it:
- Paul Stamatiou changed his permalink structure from one that had the date, followed by the post name to one that only has the post name. Here’s what he did.
- There is a plugin for WordPress that can try to migrate your old URL’s to your new URL’s. See: Permalink Redirect.
- The same author who wrote the plugin above also wrote an article on doing it yourself, in case the plugin yields no results.
- There is another plugin for permalink migration called Dean’s Permalink Migration.
More Resources for Permalinks
I have found a few useful plugins and guides for you to check out that can help you better the current permalink structure of your site.
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Redirection Plugin
Need to only change a few URL’s? This plugin by John Godley can make changing single URL’s on your blog simple, and it’s all done right from the admin panel.
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SEO Title Tag
This plugin makes it easy to select the best, most relevant keywords from your post title and include them in your permalink.
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WordPress Codex
For everything you need to know about permalinks, check out what the WordPress Codex has to say.
The Discussion
Leave a Comment Read Again?Hey Alex! Permalink structure is one of those things I wish I knew about when I first started. I’m glad there’s an article here to help people out. It included everything anyone needs to know. Nicely done.
.-= Nick Tart´s last blog ..Interview: Lindsay Manseau, Freelance Photographer and Beyond =-.
Thanks Nick. It’s often one of those thing that people mess up when they’re new, then try to fix later. Very annoying.
I am glad you wrote this Alex. It’s a bit obvious for bloggers who’ve been blogging since a while but new bloggers find themselves pulling their hair out about this.
.-= King Sidharth´s last blog ..Why ‘King’ Sidharth – the Secret Behind ‘King’ =-.
Hey Alex
This is really a great post on WordPress Permalinks. When i started first i used “http://domainname.com/categ/postname” but later on i changed to “http://domainename.com/postname” and i think it’s better to have “blogname/postname” from starting (atleast for me).
Though I’m already using Permalink Redirect Plugin.
Thanks,
Dev
.-= Dev | Technshare´s last blog ..8 Ways to Get More Traffic to Your Blog =-.
Thanks!
So was the plugin pretty simple and straightforward to use? All your links were okay?
The traffic I get from search engines changed significantly, after changing my permalinks. I also thing blogname/post_name is a better structure for a permalink. But again you need to try and see what suits you best.
.-= Adam @ Selling Manager Ebay´s last blog ..10 Most Effective Ways to Sell Your EBook =-.
Did it change for the better or for worse?
A great little plugin for making your URL’s short and clean is Clean Slugs by Yoast. You have to sign up to his newsletter to get it but it is worth it.
Andrew
.-= Andrew @ Blogging Guide´s last blog ..How to create awareness for your blog =-.
I was looking for the plugin to include in the post, but I couldn’t remember the name! Thanks for mentioning that Andrew.
Glad I could help, Alex.
Andrew
.-= Andrew @ Blogging Guide´s last blog ..How to create awareness for your blog =-.
Thanks for the great post about permarlink structure. I also use the type of permalink structure used on blogussion because it has many SEO benefits.
.-= Onibalusi Bamidele´s last blog ..7 days challenge – how it went =-.
I like it for this blog, it seems a little more professional to me and keeps things more organized.
I think a lot of it depends on your niche. My site has different topics that work better when I add in categories. Plus, I also feel there’s less room for making articles with the same name. So for me, I would say:
http://domain.com/category/post-name/
If you have a lot of categories, it’s definitely worth putting the category in your URL I think.
I’ve been lurking for a while but this topic made me come out. Been trying to figure this out, so thanks for the info. I do have one question.
I downloaded the permalink redirect and it worked fine on my test site. But when I tried it on my real site ran into some problems. All the pages except the blog comes up with the new style permalinks.
The blog pages gives me a page not found error. Didn’t have that problem on my test site. Can you give me any insight?
.-= Angie´s last blog ..Slipcover Show-off #8 =-.
Thanks for finally leaving a comment here, Angie!
Unfortunately I have never used the plugin myself, so I can’t be much help for you there. You should try going onto the plugin author’s site to get some support.
Hope you find a solution.
On of the main reasons I use the Platinum SEO plugin is it’s permalink feature, among all the others.
.-= Dennis Edell | Direct Sales Marketing´s last blog ..What are YOUR Top 3 Social Sharing Recommendations =-.
What exactly does Platinum SEO do to URL’s? I don’t remember that plugin affecting URL’s when I used it.
Change your permalink after publishing and it auto-redirects.
There are other plugins that do JUST that, but why have multiple plugins when it isn’t necessary?
.-= Dennis Edell | Direct Sales Marketing´s last blog ..Do You USE Aweber? I Want Your Affiliate Link. Part 2 =-.
I use /%postname%/ for all my blogs
.-= Stefan´s last blog ..Stay tuned =-.
I have a question Alex. Says I’m using the permalinks in this way right now “http://domain.com/post-name.php”, I remembered that someone mentioned URL with .php will be slowing down the loading speed, how true is it? What do you think Alex?
If I change the permalinks from “http://domain.com/post-name.php” to “http://domain.com/post-name/”, and I use the redirect plugin to redirect all the URL, all the link juice and PR in old permalinks will be lost?
I need someone to clarify it before I can change the permalinks as I’ve built quite a lot backlinks to all the articles.
Thanks Alex.
Regards,
Lee
.-= Lee Ka Hoong´s last blog ..3 Effective Ways to Monetize Website Traffic =-.
It doesn’t have an impact. If WordPress didn’t give you the ability to change your permalink structure, most pages on your blog would load with .php anyhow. The custom permalinks mask (hide) the extensions at the end of the URL, so either way you do it – loading time will not change.
Unless you change it the proper way, then you will have some problems. If the plugin works as advertised, then it will take care of it all for you. Pagerank will change as the URL is different, but it’s worth it in my opinion to remove the .php extension.
Like Nick, I wish I had thought or researched permalinks before I started blogging. Right now, I just changed from domain/year/month/postname to domain/postname/ with ease following a simple guide.
I did a site:domain.com check on my site and clicked a few links and the 301 redirect seems to be working fine.
Thanks Alex!
.-= Glen´s last blog ..5 Security Tips For Your Forum! =-.
Glad that all worked out, thanks for stopping by Glen!
The best permalink structure is /%postname%/. and migrating the permalinks is bit risky for those who don’t know how to change or move permalinks from one domain to another domain.
Their are professionals who will help you out migrating your permalinks and they make this task easy for you.
It is risky, but has a lot of importance to it!
I would never hire someone to mess around with my blog. if anyone’s going to mess in my FTP, potentially my cPanel – it has to be me! I have spent hours trying to get stuff like this work by myself. Not fun, I’ll tell you that much.
This article is so important for people to read as permalinks are critical from day one and the best structure that you mention is the first one: domain name-post name. This is so important from the beginning because people will link in to you on these links!
.-= Richard Cummings´s last blog ..SEO: Keyword Competitive Analysis =-.
I felt like this blog needed some more beginner articles, so I did my best going back an often overlooked mistake many “noobs” make.
Thanks for dropping by!
Normally I use the structure /%category%/%postname%/ It also somehow helps a little towards getting sitelinks perhaps (I’m not sure though).
.-= Florence´s last blog ..Orkut, Hi5, Wordpress, Blogger, Twitter, Facebook… Next What? =-.
I like that way too, and I use it here. Just seems more professional to me.
That’s a good question, I’m not 100% sure…will have to go to Google for this.
Good post Alex.
A lot of people just starting out either don’t know how to set them up, or don’t realize the importance of permalinks.
.-= wpBlast´s last blog ..Sites Powered by Wordpress #1 =-.
That’s exactly why I felt I needed to do an article like this.
Thanks for stopping by.
I think that http://domain.com/post-name/ is the best permalink example to use not only because it is very simple and includes the most important part, (post title) but also because search engines give more importance to pages in the root folder of a website.
I have never heard that. That’s a cool little perk if it’s actually true! I guess this blog is missing out a bit, but I doubt it counts for too much.
Great job as fully explaining this. Most people will just cover that wordpress should be /%postname%/ but it’s important to think it through it showing the data and category will complement your blog.
.-= Murlu´s last blog ..My 3 Favorite Ways To Make Money Online =-.
A lot of permalink structures can really depend on your niche. Like, personal blogs use just the post name, or add a date to the URL more than any other blogs. Then we have a high content site like this, or FreelanceSwitch that breaks it down into categories.
It’s even about personal preference too.
There are so many blogs that I visit on a daily basis that just use the standard Permalink structure it’s amazing. Some of them I actually like very much and return to check out what’s new. I do wish that they would change the structure which would help their great content be more visible to the world.
I just feel like it’s not my place to contact them and give them the tip…
.-= Cemil´s last blog ..Google’s SEO Report Card – An Insight from Matt Cutts =-.
That’s…insane. I stumble across blogs that still have the “p=” crap and am amazed.
You should definitely bring it to their attention, just send your tip as a friendly request. If they have a contact form, they are obligated to feedback.
Thanks for share.
.-= David´s last blog ..Maria Sharapova Has Balls in Her Pants =-.
Thanks information permalink for wordpress
.-= Ivan Syba@Selabung´s last blog ..Article Directories =-.
Well, I think permalinks are very useful in your blog especially that it serves the search engines well. So I believer, any blogger who wanna be, is first of all able to customize his blog well before posting. Permalink is one of the first things that you should do.
It’s very simple to work on with wordpress. Simply go to permalink under settings. Click customize and type in /%post title%/ that’s it.:)
Hi, Alex, I made a huge mistake by changing permalinks a week ago without redirecting them. Now I have lost all my traffic and google is giving me results of 96 not found 404 errors. I realized this a week later then I changed my permalinks setting back to the original setting, do you think it is too late?
I keep a record of original permalinks for each post. Should I manually fix them? Will that help?
This is one of those things that’s just best to get setup of correctly from day one!
I converted a php site that had filename.php for every page to a wordpress site about a year ago. It was about 200 pages.
I wrote a htaccess 301 redirect file for all 200 pages, pointing to the nivce new wordpress pages domain/filename/ style.
A pain, but hey, takes 2 hours and you never touch it again and move forward.
Hi,
When you use a CMS like WordPress, is very simple to use the common permalinks. One option to those who don’t use wordpress, but know something about Linux is to use mod_rewrite from Apache.
Thanks
Rafael from Consultoria Linux Team
these are useful tips i try hardly improving my blog seo.
how i use http://domain.com/post.html is it good for seo ?
Nice post. A good permalink structure helps a lot in the SEO of your website. Designing a permalink structure with proper and optimum use of keywords is very useful for the website rankings.
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