One of the basic factors of SEO (search engine optimization) is the actual URL of the WordPress page or post. URL stands for Uniform Resource Locator it's basically the address of that specific page on the internet. WordPress does a lot of things really, really well right out of the box however creating clean and useful URL's is not one of them.
With a new installation of WordPress the URL's are kind of a mess. Say I write a post about my new Border Collie Puppy. With no changes WordPress creates a URL extension that looks something like this...
mywebsite/?
...which is both ugly and really unhelpful. They look like this because WordPress is not a plain old static HTML website but is database driven and dynamically created on the fly. If you don't understand what that means don't sweat it as it's not really that important in the early stages. What we want to do is turn those ugly links into pretty, useful and keyword rich links.
Fortunately WordPress comes with the option of creating Permalinks which turns the above ugly link into something like this...
mywebsite/border-collie-puppy
that's better! This Permalink both describes what the post is about to websurfers, but is also easier to remember and the search engines are able to make use of the keywords right in the URL. Far better choice!
Setting up Permalinks in WordPress is easy to do. In the Admin panel click Settings then Permalinks. You'll see several different pre-set options for your Permalink structure however I'd suggest clicking on the Custom field and enter one of the following:
/%year%/%monthnum%/%postname%/
/%category%/%postname%/
/%postname%/
Using our Border Collie Puppy example from above this is how the three formats would look
mywebsite/2010/10/border-collie-puppy (2010 is the year, 10 is the month)
mywebsite/dogs/border-collie-puppy (dogs is the category)
mywebsite/border-collie-puppy (just the post name)
Personally I prefer to use the last, shortest one with just the website name and the post name. It seems to put a lot of emphasis on the keywords themselves and I've seemed to do pretty well SEO wise with this setup. If you have a lot of good categories you may want the category in the URL. Some folks really like the idea of having some sort of time in their URL which is where the first format comes into play.
No matter what format you use you'll be very pleased with the eventual results from using Permalinks in WordPress. Start using these right away when you start your WordPress blog. It is possible to switch from regular links to Permalinks later on, and even from one format to another, but it's just easier to do it right away. So get to it! Get those Permalinks going as you'll be glad you did!
With a new installation of WordPress the URL's are kind of a mess. Say I write a post about my new Border Collie Puppy. With no changes WordPress creates a URL extension that looks something like this...
mywebsite/?
...which is both ugly and really unhelpful. They look like this because WordPress is not a plain old static HTML website but is database driven and dynamically created on the fly. If you don't understand what that means don't sweat it as it's not really that important in the early stages. What we want to do is turn those ugly links into pretty, useful and keyword rich links.
Fortunately WordPress comes with the option of creating Permalinks which turns the above ugly link into something like this...
mywebsite/border-collie-puppy
that's better! This Permalink both describes what the post is about to websurfers, but is also easier to remember and the search engines are able to make use of the keywords right in the URL. Far better choice!
Setting up Permalinks in WordPress is easy to do. In the Admin panel click Settings then Permalinks. You'll see several different pre-set options for your Permalink structure however I'd suggest clicking on the Custom field and enter one of the following:
/%year%/%monthnum%/%postname%/
/%category%/%postname%/
/%postname%/
Using our Border Collie Puppy example from above this is how the three formats would look
mywebsite/2010/10/border-collie-puppy (2010 is the year, 10 is the month)
mywebsite/dogs/border-collie-puppy (dogs is the category)
mywebsite/border-collie-puppy (just the post name)
Personally I prefer to use the last, shortest one with just the website name and the post name. It seems to put a lot of emphasis on the keywords themselves and I've seemed to do pretty well SEO wise with this setup. If you have a lot of good categories you may want the category in the URL. Some folks really like the idea of having some sort of time in their URL which is where the first format comes into play.
No matter what format you use you'll be very pleased with the eventual results from using Permalinks in WordPress. Start using these right away when you start your WordPress blog. It is possible to switch from regular links to Permalinks later on, and even from one format to another, but it's just easier to do it right away. So get to it! Get those Permalinks going as you'll be glad you did!