Permalinks
Since I'll be blogging on Wordpress, I guess it would be good to start my 1st article with a few simple steps to show you how I optimised my blog for SEO:
1. Permalinks
Permalinks are the permanent links to your blog posts and by default Wordpress sets them by default to something like this:
http://seo.blorc.com/?p=123
What we need to do is to change them and make them more readable by setting it to something like this:
http://seo.blorc.com/category/sample-post/
Is it absolutely necessary? Yes, for these reasons:
- search engines love them
- it gives search engine users a rough idea what your post is about
- and it makes more sense to your readers as well!
How do I do it?
This can be done by simply entering the tags “/%category%/%postname%/” in the Custom field in Options -> Permalinks. Some people have argued that the less tags your permalink has, the better it is but I think it would be safer to have at least the category tag to reduce the chance of a duplicate title.
*Note that if your .htaccess file is not set to be writeable, Wordpress will produce a set of codes which you'll need to copy and paste to your .htaccess file!
Continue to "2. Page Title"
May 14th, 2006 19:01
[…] Continue to First Steps to Optimise Wordpress SEO. […]
May 14th, 2006 23:24
[…] Earlier on, we talked about optimising the permalinks, and now we'll talk about the page title of your Wordpress blog: 2. Page Title […]
May 14th, 2006 23:26
[…] We have so far covered Permalinks and Page Titles, so now I would like to introduce a plugin called Google Sitemap Generator. […]
May 15th, 2006 02:59
[…] 1. Permalinks - changing your Wordpress permalinks to be search-engine friendly 2. Page Title - improve the readability of your blog posts 3. Google Sitemaps - creating a sitemap for your blog 4. Tagging & Meta Keywords - implementing tags on your blog and how to use them as meta keywords. […]
June 28th, 2006 09:09
Good suggestion… i have implemented this.
July 21st, 2006 04:14
I don't see an option for "Permalinks" under the OPTIONS tag.
July 21st, 2006 07:03
well, that's 'cos wordpress.com offers a multi-user version of wordpress, so it doesn't have that option. It's only available for those self-installed ones.
September 3rd, 2006 05:39
If I do this will I lose all of my search engine placements that are using the =?p urls or can the search engine change on the fly?
September 3rd, 2006 19:58
well, you won't lose it but if you use the sitemap plugin I recommended, it'll update google about the link changes.
the old links with =?p urls will still display the relevant information even when it's changed to the permalink i recommended.
September 7th, 2006 07:38
When I change over to a title style URL, my categories won't work. When I click on one of the categories I am just taken back to the main page. Can anybody help with this?
September 7th, 2006 09:19
hmm, when you've changed the permalink format to what I suggested, did wordpress ask for you to change the .htaccess file?
if so, did you copy and paste everything?
October 1st, 2006 03:20
A question…would you say it is better to have catetory/post name as you mention above because this is logical, or post name/category so that if your link is long, the user will be sure to see the most meaningful part of it in the search engine results and there is no chance of the post name being truncated?
October 5th, 2006 17:05
i prefer category/post because the post part is more visible than the category at the end of the url…but seriously it's up to your preference…I'm not too sure about the effect but you can experiment with it =)
October 20th, 2006 22:21
Is it bad to have the same word mentioned twice in the Permlink? For example I would the format of “/%category%/%postname%/" the category is "Paris" and my post title is "Seeing Mona Lisa in Paris".
Aslo you mentioned in this post that its "safer to have at least the category tag to reduce the chance of a duplicate title.". Could you clarify more please? Are duplicates bad?
thanks for the great site
October 20th, 2006 22:43
well, i don't think it's bad, instead it gives the search engine user a better idea of what will appear in your article as we read from left to right:
so if you're searching for "paris", you'll see "paris" first in your category which will pique your interest and the last bit which says "seeing mona lisa in paris", tells the search engine user so much more than a normal permalink would do =)
October 21st, 2006 08:20
Thanks. Here is another question what are your thoughts on the theaory using ".htm" at the each post link? You can do this by using this code for permlink "/%postname%.htm"
I saw an article mentioning it here..
http://www.emilyrobbins.com/how-to-blog/how-to-configure-wordpress-to-create-search-engine-friendly-urls-for-permalinks-242.htm
October 24th, 2006 20:58
hi chris, thanks for the link, sounds very interesting!
but I'm not really sure if it'll bring any extra benefits =)
April 15th, 2007 04:49
[…] Wordpress SEO: First Steps I have identified 5 important parts to optimising your Wordpress blog and broken them down into smaller chunks of information for easy digestion. Feel free to implement them in any order you like: 1. Permalinks - changing your Wordpress permalinks to be search-engine friendly 2. Page Title - improve the readability of your blog posts 3. Google Sitemaps - creating a sitemap for your blog 4. Tagging & Meta Keywords - implementing tags on your blog and how to use them as meta keywords. 5. Site Submissions - submit your site to blog directories, aggregators, etc. I hope you find them useful. [Source..] __________________ My vBSEO Forums: vBulletin Setup Optimization - United Radio Operators My Blogs: Brandon Sheley - Alissa Sheley - vBulletin Blogs & some Short URL's: VBS - FV - Add Zoints Tag pages to your vBSEO Sitemap […]
April 15th, 2007 05:01
[…] Re: Blog SEO Part 1 here are a few good links 1. Permalinks - changing your Wordpress permalinks to be search-engine friendly 2. Page Title - improve the readability of your blog posts 3. Google Sitemaps - creating a sitemap for your blog 4. Tagging & Meta Keywords - implementing tags on your blog and how to use them as meta keywords. 5. Site Submissions - submit your site to blog directories, aggregators, etc. I hope you find them useful. […]