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Okay, this time it will be just a small tip, I see many people do not know about. I must say this tip is for WordPress blog users, I don’t know what kind of system is in other blogs.
So what am I talking about??
Every WordPress blog user should use and customize their permalink structure. What permalink means and stand for? Permalinks are the permanent URLs to Your individual blog posts, categories, archives and others. It is URL that follows after Your web site address for example I use (example.com as web site front page address) – example.com/follows-permalink-address. You see?
This is default address to blog posts after installing WordPress blog – http://example.com/?p=123, WordPress calls this “Ugly” link and I cannot agree more :)
Whole reason I write this short article, because I see so many blogs using this default ugly link. Why people call this about ugly link? Actually it’s because this link is very unfriendly to the search engines – one of the most important criteria to the search engine spider is file name – do not to waste this SEO friendly factor. You see permalink address like ?p=123 do not say anything about Your post. Okay, now maybe You agree, You should use SEO friendly permalink so I will go ahead and answer to the next question – How to implement it?
Ugly permalink – http://example.com/?p=123
Pretty permalink – http://example.com/category/post-name/ or http://example.com/year/month/day/post-name
You can change permalink settings in Your admin panel Settings–>Permalinks. If Your settings are default I suggest and recommend to change it to – /%category%/%postname%/
Do this in every blog when You are starting out. Now Your address to post will be http://www.example/com/category/post-title – much better indeed?
Huh, but what You can do if You’re using default settings and have many posts already?
You have all these links in search engines, trackbacks, pingbacks and social bookmarking sites – permalink change would seriously crash and broke all links out there. If You are in this situation there is actually one thing to do, I’ll explain things later.
Take these steps then in following order:
1. Download and install Permalink Migration plugin
2. Unzip it, drop it in wp-content/plugins folder and activate it;
3. Now go to admin panel->options->PermalinksMigration
4. And then set the old, default permalink structure of your site in the form.
5. Now go to Your admin panel Settings–>Permalinks. Now change it to – /%category%/%postname%/
Permalink Migration plugin – “With this plugin, you can safely change your permalink structure without breaking the old links to your web site,and even doesn’t affect your search engine rankings.” It’s called 301 Redirect, also known as a permanent redirect. For alternative You can also check out this Redirection plugin with more options.
Now instead of hitting 404 error page, user will be automatically redirected to Your new structure URL in moments and search engine spiders also will find new links faster and change it! Nice one! Also You can use redirection plugin if You are migrating pages from other web site, or are changing the directory of your WordPress installation. I hope this will help – now You have much more SEO-friendly permalink structure!
If You have any tips, questions, feel free to ask, also consider to visit WordPress Codex – Using Permalinks, You’ll find more options how to change Your permalinks using different tags like - %year%, %monthnum%, %day%, %hour%, %minute%, %second% and much more detailed explanation.
Thanks for this.. but i want know how this permalink is used in my php type website other then wordpress Good guidance for creating user and seo friendly permalink structure, thank you very much, Great post.
Thanks for suggesting best permalink for wordpress. Nice article! I am thinking about doing exactly …..It’s very useful !…
thanks………..
Great post! Great work in this. I see a lot of the ruler schemes you’re advocating here and agree that they are prettier. Nice article! I am thinking about doing exactly . I am happy this article helped to You! Thank you.
great job congrulations ;)
It seems everyone is still hung up on “pretty” mod re-written urls for seo purposes. Yeah they look nice enough, but they dont matter too much anymore. Infact, it’s a very difficult thing to alter if you end up over-optimizing your pages.
Best to only remove the ? and = from URLs instead of filling them with keywords
Hey thanks for sharing this. I am looking to optimize my blog to seo friendly.
I have made many experiment with this structure, but i like complete title in posts as url and category also for SEO purpose
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[...] More on the importance of permalink structures here. [...]
What’s the buzz of adding .html after postname in the permalink structure.
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Thanks for suggesting best permalink for wordpress. May be i will try this one in future.
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Thanks for this.. but i want know how this permalink is used in my php type website other then wordpress
Help me
thanks
wow Great article, thanks!
Thanks for your post , Great post.
Wow Wonderful Advise, I like it very much Permalink Site, Easy understanding and easy learning the way to use that. Thank a lot.
I found this article very useful. Please keep on posting more. Thank you.
i using /%category%/%postname%.html
Hii..thanks for share, this useful for me.
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[...] view come in to play. Many bloggers opt to have (click on these for example arguments) domain.com/category/postname/, i personally opt instead for domain.com/postname/. Disregarding the category enables you to change [...]
This is very useful article regarding how to convert the dynamic look URL in to static look URL, Thanks for sharing.
Thank you so much. I’ll be doing this today with 2 of my sites. Cross your fingers.
My question though is why in the world would the default option on wordpress be the absolute worst choice for permalink structure??
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What happens if I’ve already changed permalink structure without using the migration plugin?
I’m pretty annoyed because my Google ranking has dropped off the map.
Any suggestions I’d be grateful.
hmm ok didnt knew this !! thanks man
Good guidance for creating user and seo friendly permalink structure, thank you very much.
Really good article..
Want to ask, what if the custom structure only /%postname%.html??..without category…
Thank you for answer..
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A positive side effect of doing this at the beginning of every wp install is that it creates a .htaccess file in your root, this is an essential file for a good wp installation and can be used for more than just redirecting links, you can configure server side functions (for example forcing host/ISP php/mySQL 5 to be used)
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@theCount good addition, I didn’t know that, thanks!
For me I like to use the .htm ending.. so it will be like this %postname%.htm or html.. look like static page..
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@Stop Dreaming Start Action is it a better way? why you need it to look like static page?
thank you for the info I able to change it :)
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Question about the following:
“4. And then set the old, default permalink structure of your site in the form.”
What is the ‘default structure’?
For some reason when i changed my permalink settings to custom, all my posts lead to a 404 error. can someone help me out on this one? thanks!
[...] http://www.1stwebdesigner.com/wordpress/how-to-create-your-permalink-structure-more-user-and-seo-fri... [...]
Thanks, thanks,thans ….from spain.
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Wonderfull !
exactly what i needed
It’s work perfectly
thanks !
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[...] How To Create Your Permalink Structure More User And SEO-friendly [...]
[...] Wie Sie eine Suchmaschinen freundliche Permalink Struktur erstellen. Jeder Wordpress Blogger sollte seine Linkstruktur anpassen. Permalinks sind die Links ihres Blogs [...]
Thanks! This is exactly what I needed. I knew there were some wordpress plugins to help with a permalink transition, but I really needed to find a good one and get psyched up to do a big change. My site’s still somewhat young, but not young enough to make bold changes without some thought and research!
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[...] How To Create Your Permalink Structure More User And SEO-friendly [...]
Good one.
With permalinks, I use my category structure to always have good keywords in the URL. If you create subcategories, Wordpress converts them to URL directories, as in http://www.ronitbaras.com/index.php/2008/11/focus-on-the-family/parenting-family/teen-mocktail-party/, where you can see the hierarchy of categories and get a SEO bonus.
Gal
Get Business Online
The permalink migration plugin is what I should have installed over on my other blog prior to the change in the permalink structure! But that was a way good find which other WP users will find very useful! :)
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@Brian oh, do so, maybe it’ll help :)
@Ricks that’s great, if ou have any problems, just ask :)
@Chris if You don’t believe me just read Wordpress Codex link and search for SEO.
@Angie thanks for the tip! :)
@Tom yeah, I do it to hopefully help those people, who don’t know this tip..:)
Thanks for great post. It’s very useful !
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I was aware of this tip already, but I know that a lot of people aren’t. It’s well worth doing.
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Really nice article! For anyone considering using category/postname who also has a tendency to assign posts multiple categories, make sure you put something in place to counter wordpress’ tendency to create multiple addresses for the same post. I started out using category/postname and quickly switched to postname only.
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Hum. I built my own blogging engine and must admit that I defaulted to the /?b=xxx url scheme. Mainly because it’s simple to implement. I see a lot of the url schemes you’re advocating here and agree that they are prettier. But I’m just not convinced that it’s going to make a difference for SEO. You’re just saying it’s better. I’d like to understand why.
That said – I’m going to go into the code tonight and add in the prettier scheme – and do the redirecting as you suggested. Thanks for the nudge!
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Had no idea about this, well found and thanks for sharing!
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Nice article! I am thinking about doing exactly what Selene did, using categories/postname. Right now I have simply /postname..
This will come in handy when I get round to doing this! Thanks Dainis!
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@Brian oh, thanks – corrected spelling :) my bad.
Criterions?
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@Selene oh, You really cheered me up – this is one coincidence, and I am happy this article helped to You! I’ll be thankful if You pass this link further! Thanks for good words!
No kidding! I literally just changed from date based permalinks to /category/postname/ structure this morning. With the Permalink Redirect and Permalink Migration plugin, it went off without a hitch!
My problem was I changed a few postname title url’s too which I needed to use the Redirection plugin to fix.
Great info here – I know a few people thinking of changing their permalink structure… I’ll be passing this link onto them!
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