Change Your Wordpress Permalink Structure

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If your serious about S.E.O. and gaining higher rankings on the search engines, you need to change your ‘default’ Wordpress permalink structure into something that includes your keywords. Before we get started, lets find out what a permalink is:

In simple terms, A permalink is the actual URL of an article or blog post. The previous post “Best Posts Of July” has a permalink of: http://bradblogging.com/asides/best-posts-of-july-2008/
Wordpress comes pre-installed with a structure that has a permalink structure something like this: http://bradblogging.com/p=103 which is critically diminishing your blog’s S.E.O. factor.

How To Change Your Wordpress Permalink Structure:

Well, It’s actually really easy to do.

Simply login to your Wordpress Administration area (wp-admin for short).
Download “Dean’s Wordpress Permalink Migration” plugin and configure it.
Go to “Settings” and look for the tab “Permalinks” and click it.
You will now see something like this:

You can now choose what to change your linking structure to. Personally, I think that having the Category Name / Post Name is ultimately the best combination, though some may disagree. The following tags are available to use:

%year%: The year of the post, four digits, for example 2004
%monthnum%: Month of the year, for example 05
%day%: Day of the month, for example 28
%hour%: Hour of the day, for example 15
%minute%: Minute of the hour, for example 43
%second%: Second of the minute, for example 33
%postname%: A sanitized version of the title of the post (post slug field on Edit Post/Page panel). So “This Is A Great Post!” becomes this-is-a-great-post in the URI (see Using only %postname%)
%post_id%: The unique ID # of the post, for example 423
%category%: A sanitized version of the category name (category slug field on New/Edit Category panel). Nested sub-categories appear as nested directories in the URI.
%author%: A sanitized version of the author name.

When you think you have a combination that works for you, click on the Save Changes - *NOTE* – Please make sure you have access to your .htaccess file in order to make the changes. There is a text box below the save changes that will generate code for you to add to your .htaccess file in order for the new linking structure to work. You will have to manually add this to your file in order for any of the links on your blog to work. I would personally recommend the next option which is easier to do.
Another way to save the changes is to simply make your .htaccess file writable (Mod: 666) so Wordpress can do it automatically. See Changing File Permissions for more help.
Your Done! Enjoy better S.E.O. rankings and traffic as a result of the change.

Disclaimer: Brad Blogging is not responsible for, and expressly disclaims all liability for, damages of any kind arising out of use, reference to, or reliance on any information contained within the site. While the information contained within the site is periodically updated, no guarantee is given that the information provided on this website is correct, complete, and up-to-date.