SEO for Blogs – Part Two: Wordpress Permalink Structure
March 12th, 2009This is the part two of my SEO for Blogs series of posts. If you have missed part one, about keyword research you can read it here – SEO for Blogs Part One.
In this post I am going to concentrate on making your blog permalinks more SEO friendly.
One of the most important settings in Wordpress for SEO is the permalink structure – this is basically what your blog post URLs will look like. For SEO purposes it is best to have a URL that is meaningful and contains your keywords, so whatever you do, don’t leave the permalink setting at the default as this will result in each post as your permalinks will then look something like this: http://yourdomain.com/?p=number - not very meaningful.
It is better to set up your permalink structure so that your permalinks look like one of the following;
http://yourdomainname.com/category/postname OR
http://yourdomainname.com/postname
To set this up, simply login to your Wordpress admin panel and click on the Settings link in the sidebar and then on Permalinks. Next choose “custom” from the menu and enter one of the following in the box:
/%category%/%postname%/ – if you want your permalinks to contain the category and the postname OR
/%postname%/ – if you want your permalinks to contain only the postname
These are the optimimum permalink settings for SEO in Wordpress.
To support this new permalink structure you may also need to update your .htaccess file. This file normally resides in the root directory on your web server, so you will need to edit it and add the following lines if they are not already present:
RewriteEngine On
RewriteBase /
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteRule . /index.php [L]
If you have had a Wordpress blog for a while and you are currently using one of the other permalink settings you need to think carefully before making this change. If you have lots of backlinks to existing blog posts and you are getting traffic to your blog, then changing the permalink structure will result in you losing any traffic that is going to indivudal posts. Luckily there is a solution for this common problem – there are various plugins available to do a permanent 301 redirect from your old blog links URLs to the new ones.
You can download one such plugin here – Permalink Redirect Wordpress Plug-In
Read Part Three – 10 of the Best Wordpress SEO Plugins
March 12th, 2009 at 9:20 pm
Hi Suzanne,
As usual your observations and advice are well written and easy to understand.
Being a new WP user I will implement these tips straight away and will recommend anyone to read your posts, thank you for sharing
regards,
Mal.
April 19th, 2009 at 5:03 am
Hi!
I am trying to change my permalink structure but there is a little problem.
To edit a file that is on my server, I have to download it, then edit it and upload it back on the server. I never had a problem doing this.
But for .htaccess, I just can’t download it. I am not sure why.
Do you have any idea of how I edit it ??
April 19th, 2009 at 10:47 am
Hi Patrice,
If you can’t download .htacess, make sure that both your FTP program and your file manager on your computer are set up to show hidden files, otherwise .htaccess may look like it is not there, even though it really is. If you are still having problems editing it I would recommend contacting your host.
Cheers,
Suzanne
April 19th, 2009 at 7:56 pm
Hi!
It worked! Thank you so much!
June 26th, 2009 at 5:33 am
Please tell me, ¿What is the better /%postname%/ or /%postname%?, and ¿why?.
Thank you very much.
July 28th, 2009 at 2:18 am
Hi Suzanne, great information as usual. The whole of your SEO for Blogs series of posts, is really helful for anyone new to Search Engine Optimization.