Best-Wordpress-Permalink-Structure

Wordpress is one of the widely used blogging platforms by many professionals as well as newbie bloggers. Do you know that more than 75% of sites are using WordPress platform ? People prefer using WordPress because of easy optimization and cool WordPress plugins. Because of these WordPress plugins, anyone can easily improve their site traffic and website rank.

Another way which can help you improving your site SEO is optimizing your permalinks.

In this article, I’ll be teaching you how can you get the best permalink structure for your WordPress SEO. If you usually get confused while choosing the correct permalink structure then I’m quite sure that you’ll be learning a lot from this article. Continue reading this article and find out that how can you actually choose the best URL structure for improving your blog SEO.

Let’s get started with the basics :-


What is a Permalink ?

Permanent links, Commonly called as Permalinks are URL’s which are individual to every posts and page. Tag archives, as well as categories, have their own permalinks on your blog. Permalinks never chance and became permanent URL of that particular post or page.

If anyone wants to go through your content then they have to enter that particular web address to view your post. Not only readers but even search engines and other websites
use permalinks to link your website i.e, backlinking.

Now you know the importance of permalinks. Therefore, You should always be careful while choosing the correct permalink for your blog or website. You can’t change your permalink in future that means you have to select the best permalink for your blog posts/pages.

Now, Let’s see how it actually works ?

Permalink for Wordpress SEO

Following are mainly three types of permalinks structure available for your WordPress blog :-

1. Default Permalinks

When you don’t modify your permalink then it is termed to be default permalink. This permalink structure is followed by query string which is used to identify your post ID. Here’s an example :-

http://www.example.com/?p=50.

This type of permalink structure is not at all good for your WordPress site SEO as it is not readable and doesn’t convey any message relevant to your blogpost.

You should always try to avoid using such type of permalink structure.

2. Good Permalinks

Next, we have good permalink structure. These type of permalink structure contains “index.php” after the domain name. Here’s an example :-

http://www.example.com/index.php/yyyy-mm-dd/post-name/

These kind of permalink structure are not the best but is way better than the default permalink you have for your blog.

3. Best Permalinks

This is the best permalink structure which is preferred by many pro-bloggers and SEO experts. Only by reading the post URL, you can figure out what’s the post is all about and what information you will be getting there. Here’s an example :-

http://www.example.com/post-name/

Or

http://www.example.com/yyyy/mm/dd/post-name/


Best Permalink Structure for Wordpress

You can easily customize the URL structure for your archives and permalinks. Here is the following option for choosing the best permalink structure :-

1. Plain or Default

This is the default permalink structure which looks like http://www.example.com/?=50. This permalink structure should always be avoided.

2. Date + Post Name

In this permalink structure, there’s a year/month/day format is included before post’s name.

For example : http://www.example.com/2016/02/2/post-name/

Bloggers prefer using such kind of structure when they have to tell when was that particular content was published.

This is  not the best structure for permalink but it works quite good.

3. Month + Post Name

This permalink structure is very much similar to the above one. In this structure type, we don’t include the date. Here’s an example :-

http://www.example.com/2016/02/post_name/

If you are owning a tech blog or news blog then this structure will work well for it.

4. Numeric

In Numeric permalink structure, only post ID is included.

For example : http://www.example.com/archives /123/

This kind of structure should always be avoided as it doesn’t convey any meaningful message to readers.

5. Post Name

This is the best permalink structure which is used by many bloggers. This structure only includes post name.

For example : http://www.example.com/post_name/

A reader can easily get to know what’s the post is all about by only reading the web address.

6. Custom Permalink

Custom Permalink is the user defined permalink structure. You can customize the permalink in your style. Adding category tag between your domain and post name is one of the common examples of a custom permalink. Not just only category tag but you can also prefer using a month, year, date, data, keywords etc.

Custom permalink is very helpful for WordPress search engine optimization.


How to Select Best Custom Permalink for Your Blog

There are plenty of structure tags available for the customizing permalink. Following are some tags which are mostly used :-
  • %postname% 
  • %post_id%
  • %category%
  • %year%
  • %monthnum%
  • %day%
  • %author%

These are the permalink structure tags which are used for making WordPress site SEO optimized.

While customizing your permalink you should include at least your post_name or post_id. These are the most important permalink tags which will surely increase your website ranking and it's searching engine visibility.

SEO Friendly Permalinks
For better search engine optimization of your WordPress blog, it is must choose a correct permalink structure. Whenever a user search for a query on Google, he/she notices four things i.e, Post Title, Date, Description, and Permalink. All these information help the user in deciding the correct link.

If you want to make your permalink more SEO friendly then you should keep the following thing in mind :-

1. Try to keep your permalink short ( around 100 characters will be good )
2. By using keywords in your permalink you can optimize your permalink.
3. Always use “ - ” ( dash ) as a separator between words like or, but, if etc.

Conclusion

Setting up your WordPress blog permalinks is one of the most important SEO technique. Not only responsible for website ranking but correct permalink structure helps you improving your daily blog traffic.

That’s all with this article. Hope, you liked it. If you have any questions then feel free to ask in the comment section down… :)