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09.17.09 Permalink Structures And How To Choose  By
Michael Gray
For this post we're going to be taking look at the optimal permalink and URL structures for wordpress. There are a lot of different options, and there isn't a one size fits all answer, however there are definitely better and worse choices you can make. Out of the box wordpress is configured like this http://example.com?p=123 This really isn't a permalink structure, it's a parameter based format with "123? being the post number. While all major search engines can crawl and index this it's generally not an optimal setup. From an SEO perspective you miss the opportunity to give the search engines some keywords, and from a user experience you miss the opportunity to entice them with an information scent that they are on the right track. For example lets assume you were looking for hotels in Kentucky which URL gives you a clue you might find the information your wanted on the page: http://example1.com?p=1234 http:// example2.com/kentucky-hotels/ Another common implementation involves putting some or all of the date in the post URL, like these two examples: http://example.com/2009/09/16/sample-post/ http://example.com/20090916-sample-post/ The first example creates a heirarchy based on year, day, month, this is really unneccesary in most situations. If you are going to add words/numbers to your url's they should have a reason and/or keyword value. Unless the date is important to the majority of the keywords or terms you are trying to rank for, they are decoration. In fact if you publish a lot of evergreen content, having the date may work against you. Many users have a bias for "new" content, and are more likely to click something newer over something older (I use date based hooks to stop showing the date in the text on older posts). In the second example you aren't creating a directory structure but you are including the date. This is less dangerous, but if you change your production schedule and the date of publication, you may create some 404 errors if posts were interlinked, so again I'd avoid using it, unless you have a really good reason. Another common implementation involves categories like this: http://example.com/baking/apple-pies/
On the surface this implementation looks ok, but there are some downsides, for example if you like to put posts in two categories your post can exist at two URL's like: http://example.com/baking/apple-pies/ http://example.com/dessert/apple-pies/ The problem is BOTH url's will work, the second is wordpress chooses which is the "primary" one, not you. Another disadvantage is if you decide to rename/consolidate/change your categories you've got a massive 301 project on your hands. However one advantage of this set up is that you can exclude some directories via robots.txt file. A variation of this technique is : http://example.com/baking/1234/ Unless you are going to have a massive number of posts, or posts with very similar titles (you may have 15 different apple pie recipes for example) I'd opt for the keyword over the post number. One last combination I'd like to look at is : http://example.com/post-title/ The advantage of this configuration is it's very short and has keywords, however if you have more than one post with the same name, wordpress will automatically add a number onto the end like this: Continue reading this article. About the Author: Michael Gray is SEO specialist and publishes a Search Engine Industry blog at www.Wolf-Howl.com. He has over 10 years experience in website development and internet marketing, helping both small and large companies increase their search engine visibility, traffic, and sales. Michael is a current member of Internet Marketing of New York ( IM-NY.org) and a guest speaker on Webmaster Radio. He is also an editor for the popular search engine new website Threadwatch.org. |
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