WordPress SEO: Optimal Permalink Structure

Search Engine Optimization

In recent years, most bloggers have the awareness of implmenting pretty permalink structure in their WordPress blogs. But pretty permalink structure does not mean it is optimal. Without optimal permalink structure, it will not bring you any additional benefits you can enjoy. In this post, we’re going to look at different permalink options and which permalink structure is best to choose. Of course, there isn’t a one solution fits all cases. Definitely there are better choices you can make.

What Is Permalink?

A permalink is the permanent unique URL pointing to a specific blog post, page, archive page as well as category page. To make it simple, a permalink is the unique address that is used by your blog readers to locate your blog’s entry in web browser.
Pretty permalink is the idea to craft the URL in such a way that it make sense to all non-technical people. It is the basic of the permalink optimization process.
Permalink optimization is one of the important element in SEO. The main benefit having permalink optimized is that it helps to increase the keyword ranking in search engine results. Ultimately it will bring targeted traffic to your blogs and help you to achieve business goal.

Permalink Structure

There are several types of permalink structure that you can implement on your blogs. However each of them has pros and cons. Depending on your situation, you can choose to implement one of them.

#1 Post Number

By default, WordPress is using post number as the permalink. It’s an ugly permalink and very unfriendly to the search engines and your readers. By simply looking at the URL string, you have no clue what is this article about unless you go through the full article. Same theory applies to search engines as they are designed to behave like human.

http://www.yourdomain.com/?p=123

This type of permalink is absolutely not recommended unless you do not want to rank your blog post well in search engines.

#2 Post Title

When you’re creating blog entry, WordPress allows us to specify post slug. It is identical to your post title by default. Post title (slug) is the second type of the permalink structure you’re going to into details.

http://www.yourdomain.com/your-post-title/

As we can observe from the example above, post title permalink is a keyword rich URL. It’s very simple and pretty enough to give you a clue whether the information on the page is what you want before you actually open it in your browser. Same theory, search engines are using keyword rich permalink as one of the important element when they are deciding the rankings of your articles.
There is one problem with this implementation. If you have more than one article with same post title, then WordPress will automatically add a number at the end of the permalink. For example:

http://www.yourdomain.com/your-post-title-2/

http://www.yourdomain.com/your-post-title-3/

It doesn’t matter to have a number at the end of the permalink because it does not affect how we and search engines interpret the relevancy of the article based on permalink.

#3 Date + Post Title

Another common permalink structure is to have date + post title.

http://www.yourdomain.com/2010/03/23/your-post-title/

The date in the URL is the date of creation of the blog post. It’s unnecessary to have date in URL in most situations. It’s not a keyword that you are trying to rank for in search engine results. Many readers have a bias for new content and more likely to click on something which is newer. Furthermore, if you change your date of publication to re-post your older article, your permalink will be changed and you might lose your SEO benefits that you have in your old permalink.
So this permalink structure is not recommended unless you have a very good reason.

#4 Category + Post Title

The last common permalink structure to be discussed is category + post title. Category is considered as a keyword and this structure allows you to insert more keywords into the URL. It certainly will bring you SEO benefits. From my opinion, it’s better than date + post title.

http://www.yourdomain.com/category/your-post-title/

But there are two drawbacks for this approach. First, if you assign two categories to a post, then you will have two permalinks for this article. WordPress will choose which one to show, not you.
The second disadvantage is if you plan to change the category of your blog entry, then your permalink will also be changed and potentially you may lose your SEO benefits. Of course, there are some plugins which can resolve this issue by redirecting your old permalink to new permalink but you have more work to do.

Which One Is The Optimal Permalink Structure And Why?

I strongly recommend to use post title as permalink. It’s short, simple and good enough to improve your search engine rankings. And you have less work to do when you re-structure your blog or category.

Conclusion

Post title permalink is the optimal permalink structure. As you can see from your web browser, I’m using it in this blog.
How about you? Which permalink structure you’re using and what is the reason? Do you have other permalink structures which is good to recommend? I would like to hear from you and please share with us in the comment box below.