How to Optimize your permalinks for Seo

What is permalink ?

Permalink is simply an address (URL) of your blog post or page gets when you publish it. For example, your default WordPress about page has the following address http://www.yourblogname.com/?page_id=2.
This is a permalink for the about page. The default “Hello world!” post has the following permalink http://www.yourblogname.com/?p=1.

Why you should optimize permalinks ?

Turning on permalinks is the first thing you should do after installing a new WordPress blog. Here is why.
Search engines index your blog based on URLs of your posts and pages. The default permalink structure doesn’t only look unprofessional and gives a visitor no information about the post or page itself; it also gives no clue to the search engine what this post is about.

Compare the two URLs http://www.yourblogname.com/?p=1 and
http://www.yourblogname.com/lose-twenty-pounds-thirty-days/. Apart from better readability second link has one huge advantage. It has your keywords in there. And when someone links to your post using this URL, you automatically have benefits of a backlink with your keywords.

“Permalink is simply an address of your blog post or page”
“When someone links to your post, you automatically have benefits of a backlink with your keywords”

Knowing how easy is to enable good permalink structure, having default permalinks is a worst crime you can commit against your blog.

How to set a permalink ?

1. Log in to the WordPress admin console.
2. Select “Permalinks” option under the “Settings” menu
3. Select the permalink structure under “Common Settings”
4. Leave “Category base” and “Tag base” empty
5. Click “Save changes” button

What is the best permalink structure ?

From SEO point of view, the best permalink structure is the one that is keyword rich. Therefore, “default” and “numeric” options shouldn’t be used.
Testing and statistical analysis prove that to get the best ranking page shouldn’t be more than one directory deep. This eliminates “date and name” and “month and name” options.

Since you always use your keywords in the post name, the most optimal structure will be /post-name/ or /category/post-name/.
For the first option, you change the “custom” structure into /%postname%/, for the second use /%category%/%postname%/.
If you normally put the new post in multiple categories, use the first option. If you put the post in one category only, use the second option.