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.

20 Practical SEO Tips to Super-Charge Your WordPress Blog!

We would like to introduce WordPress Expert John Lamansky, who we managed to extract from the lab just long enough for him to compose this brilliant WordPress Top 20 SEO Guide.

Got a WordPress blog that you’re eager to supercharge for optimal search engine performance? Read on! We’ll cover pinging, sitemaps, canonicalization, link juice, header tags, slugs, tags, timestamping, social media, permalinks, and a whole lot more!

20 Practical SEO Tips to Super-Charge Your WordPress Blog, By John Lamansky
WordPress SEO Tip #20 — Don’t Block the Search Engines!

First and foremost: make sure you’re not inadvertently telling the search engines to go away! Believe it or not, some WordPress installations block the search engine bots by default.

From your admin panel, go to Options > Privacy and make sure it’s set to “I would like my blog to be visible to everyone.”
Bonus Tip #1 – Are Comments Enabled?

Some WordPress users restrict comments to registered users, or disable them entirely. While this may be appropriate in some situations, in most cases comments are a very beneficial factor, and a defining mark, of a blog.

Comments engage your readers, help you get more “fresh content” SEO brownie points, and give search engines another reason to come back frequently.

Here’s how to fully enable comments:

   1. Login to the WordPress administration center
   2. Click “Options” on the menu bar
   3. Is “Users must be registered and logged in to comment” checked? If so, consider unchecking it.
   4. Click “Discussion” on the submenu bar
   5. Make sure the following are checked: “Allow people to post comments on the article” and “Allow link notifications from other Weblogs (pingbacks and trackbacks.)”

WordPress SEO Tip #19 — Does Your Blog Have a Topic?

Some of us would prefer to have a blog where we talk about anything that comes to mind: cars, movies, photosynthesis, dust mites, you name it.

In and of itself, such a blogging style isn’t wrong; however, you can leave search engines clueless as to what your blog’s about and thus for what search queries your blog should appear. And some of your readers might get annoyed in the process as well.
WordPress SEO Tip #18 — Ensure URL Canonicalization

If your blog posts are accessible from more than one URL, you could end up with:

    * Search engines confused as to which URL to display in the SERPs.
    * PageRank split between multiple pages.
    * Duplicate content penalties.

Starting with version 2.3, WordPress takes care of this and makes sure your content is accessible from only one place. So if you use an older version, either upgrade to the latest version of WordPress, or install the Permalink Redirect plugin.
WordPress SEO Tip #17 — Check for Valid XHTML

Most code errors are minor, but the more serious ones can cause content misinterpretation by search engines, lower rankings, and rendering errors.

WordPress itself produces valid code, but errors can crop up from two other common sources:

    * Poorly written plugins or themes
    * User-created coding errors (in the blog posts themselves, or through theme customizations)

First check your site for errors. If an error is found, look at the surrounding content to determine the source of the error.

If a plugin is the culprit, fix it if you’re good at that sort of thing (the beauty of open source!), or send a quick email to the plugin developer and let him or her know.
WordPress SEO Tip #16 – Don’t Leech Link Juice!

One characteristic of WordPress blogs is the sidebar, which is typically present on every single page. Do you really need to be passing link juice from every single one of your pages to every single one of those links? If the answer is no, consider adding rel=”nofollow” to the less important ones.
WordPress SEO Tip #15 — Use Images in Your Posts

Not only do they increase visitor attention and retention, they give you an opportunity to use keyword-rich “alt” attributes, “title” attributes, and filenames. Plus it’ll give your blog visibility in image search engines.
WordPress SEO Tip #14 — Does Your Theme Use Header Tags Correctly?

    * The blog title, or your main keyword should be in an <h1> tag.
    * If your subtitle is keyword-rich, you can put it in an <h2>; otherwise I recommend putting it in a non-header tag like <div>.
    * The post titles should go in <h2> tags.
    * Sidebar section titles should be <h3> tag or non-header.

Unfortunately, some themes (including the WordPress Default Theme) put the sidebar section titles in <h2> tags. Although this makes sense from a strict structural point of view, it also gives irrelevant sidebar headers (“Categories,” “Archives,” “Meta,” etc.) equal weight with your SEO-important post titles.

To sum it up: Use a theme that utilizes header-tags properly, or try fixing the theme you have.
WordPress SEO Tip #13 — Use Pinging

A ping is a “this site has new content” notification that invites bots to visit your blog.

WordPress pings one website called Ping-o-matic by default, which in turn pings others. You can also add additional services by going to Options > Writing in the admin panel. (For example, the pinging URL for Google Blog Search is http://blogsearch.google.com/ping/RPC2)

Another Bonus Tip: Once a post is published, WordPress issues pings whenever the post is edited. Try to cut down on after-publishing edits to avoid being considered a ping spammer.
WordPress SEO Tip #12 — Install the Google XML Sitemaps Generator Plugin

XML Sitemaps are search-engine-friendly directories of your blog’s posts and other pages intended to help search engines spider your site. Though pioneered by Google, they’re supported by Yahoo, MSN, and Ask.com as well.

The Google XML Sitemaps Generator for WordPress makes creation of these sitemaps easy and automatic. It also lets the engines know when you post new content.
WordPress SEO Tip #11 — Avoid Sponsored Themes

There was a debate in the WordPress community not too long ago on the topic of sponsered themes. These themes include paid links (usually in the footer) than can suck PageRank and possibly result in a Google paid links penalty.

Stick with WordPress theme directories that don’t include sponsored themes, like the WordPress Theme Viewer.
Bonus Tip #2 — Write Right Post Titles

SEO isn’t everything: once you’re high in the SERPs, you need action words to prompt clickthroughs.

Put keywords in your title if at all possible, but not if it’ll compromise the click-trigger action title.
WordPress SEO Tip #10 — Use Traditional SEO Techniques

A WordPress blog is a website too, so the traditional SEO techniques still apply:

    * Use important keywords in the title and throughout the post, but don’t overdo it.
    * Bold your keywords when it makes sense.
    * Develop links to your blog.

WordPress SEO Tip #9 — Use the Power of the Slug

Ever wondered what the “Post Slug” on the “Write” page was? It’s the text that goes in the URL when you have “Pretty Permalinks” enabled (see tip #2).

By default the slug is a “sanitized” version of the post title. However, if your title is overly long or keyword-sparse, you can change the slug through the Post Slug box.

Yet Another Bonus Tip: The SEO Slugs plugin can take out common words like “you,” “is,” etc. out of the slug for you automatically.
WordPress SEO Tip #8 — Use Timestamping to Stagger Fresh Content

Search engines and visitors love fresh blog content on a steady, regular basis. But for a lot of us, creativity comes irregularly: 10 post ideas one week, none the next.

Enter timestamping. When writing a post, click the plus sign next to “Post Timestamp.” Set a date and time, and the post will publish by itself whenever you specify.

Search engines will keep coming back, and visitors won’t be inundated with a ton of new posts all at once.

Hint: If you’ve timestamped a post, don’t click the Publish button, since that’ll publish your post immediately regardless of your timestamp. Instead, select “Published” under “Post Status” and click the Save button.
WordPress SEO Tip #7 — Use Tags for Free Keyword Boosts

WordPress 2.3 and above include a tags feature that lets you assign keywords to your blog posts. Once you start using them, then since each tag gets its own webpage, you’ll be generating a ton of your own themed, keyword-oriented internal backlink pages.
WordPress SEO Tip #6 — Integrate Social Media
        12diggsdigg    

Adding social media links/buttons like the ones above makes it easy for visitors to promote your quality content (hint, hint). Social media is a great way to build links naturally as well as drive targeted site traffic.

    * Share This is a very popular “social media all-in-one” plugin.
    * If you’re a FeedBurner user, you can use FeedFlare to add action links, including social media ones, to the bottom of your posts.

Lots of social media sites provide code you can use to generate buttons like those above. Grab your own code from:

    * Digg
    * Sphinn
    * StumbleUpon
    * Mixx
    * Scoop

WordPress SEO Tip #5 — Implement Deep-Linking

Here are several great ways to implement deep-linking on your WordPress blog:

    * Within your posts, link to other posts on your blog and use important keywords in the anchor text.
    * Install the Similar Posts plugin, which inserts a list of related posts you’ve written to the bottom of each of your blog posts. This process will create aged deep links and increase visitor retention.
    * Display your most popular posts in your sidebar using the Popularity Contest plugin. Gives your most popular posts tons of internal links, and helps your visitors find your best content.

WordPress SEO Tip #4 — Make Scrapers Work to Your Advantage

Most of us would probably be upset if someone used scraping (automated content stealing) to publish our laboriously-written posts as his or her own.

But with a little work, you can make the scrapers work for you, not against you.

Here’s how to do it, courtesy of EarnersBlog.com:

    If you use WordPress it’s very easy to take full advantage of these sites linking to you, all you need to do is create links back to your content within your feed.

    What you’ll need for this:

        * Cave Monkey’s Full Text Feed Plugin
        * Solo Technologies Add Related Posts to your Feed Plugin

    These plugins simply show your entire post in your feed & also add some related posts in your feed only (which will also increase the amount of people in your feed reading more than 1 post).
    Now, everytime anyone scrapes your blog via your RSS feed & republishes it they’ll be deep linking to 5 or more of your existing posts. Bingo.

WordPress SEO Tip #3 — Install the All-in-One SEO Plugin

Like the name implies, this plugin covers a lot of the bases.

    * Puts the blog name after the post title, giving your keyword-rich titles more prominence.
    * Allows you to override title and meta tags on your homepage as well as your individual posts.
    * Lets you add “noindex” to your category and/or tag pages to avoid duplicate content.
    * And more.

A must-have for serious WordPress SEO.
WordPress SEO Tip #2 — Use “Pretty Permalinks”

Sure, you may already use Pretty Permalinks, but are you using the best possible permalink structure?

For those of who don’t use Pretty Permalinks, it’s a must-do for WordPress SEO. Permalinks, in essence, are the URLs of your WordPress blog posts. “Pretty Permalinks” put slugs (which should contain keywords — see tip #9) in your URLs instead of the default numbers.

To enable or change them, first login, then go to Options > Permalinks.

The two options you do not want are “Default” and “Numeric.” Here are my suggestions for picking a “pretty” permalink structure:

    * Date and Name Based: The problem with this is that your posts are several extra directories deep, which can decrease relevence in some search engines. However, such a permalink structure can nevertheless be desireable if your blog is news-oriented or date-sensitive.
    * Post Name Only: If your blog covers one topic that has no subtopics (which, though possible, is unlikely), select “Custom” and type /%postname%/
    * Category Based: If your blog covers multiple topics, implement category-based URLs. (You have to look into the Codex to find information on category-based URLs, so many WordPress users probably don’t realize that this option exists!) To implement it, select “Custom” and type /%category%/%postname%/

WordPress SEO Tip #1 — WordPress Secret: Use Category-Based Permalinks for SEO Siloing

Here’s the big finale. Problem is, this tip is so important (and lengthy) that it really merits its own post.

Here’s a teaser: it entails implementing the powerful siloing technique on your WordPress blog through a combination of plugins, settings, and strategies.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Tips for WordPress

 Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Tips for WordPress

1. Write keyword rich post titles – it almost goes without saying, but the post title is the most important part of the blog post for many reasons. From your reader’s perspective, a descriptive and compelling title helps them decide if your post is worth reading or not. From an SEO perspective, think about the keywords or phrases people might type into a search box to find your post 2 months from now, and use those words or phrases in your post title. For maximum benefit, try to avoid titles that are cute, clever or cryptic.

2. Make your post titles live links – many of the WP themes already do this, but if yours doesn’t, you can add the necessary code pretty easily. In your Main Index Template and Page Template, find the code for the post tiltle. It’ll probably look like this:

<h2><?php the_title(); ?></h2>

To link your post titles, you’ll want to replace that code with the following (be sure to leave out the “#” symbols):

<h2><a href="<?php the_permalink() ?>" rel="bookmark" title="Permanent Link to <?php the_title(); ?>"><?php the_title(); ?></a></h2>

3. Optimize your permalinks – the default WP 2.0 installation displays permalinks this way: http://www.savvysolo.com/?p-123. A more search-engine friendly permalink includes the post title in the link, like this: http://www.savvysolo.com/2006/01/16/keyword-rich-post-title/. This is a simple change to make. In your WP admin panel, click on the “Options” tab, then the “Permalinks” sub-tab, and choose the option just below the “Default” permalink option. See the WordPress Codex for more on permailinks.

4. Optimize your page titles – According to most SEO experts, the page title tag is one of the most important tags on your page. In most WP themes, you’ll find the page title tag in the Header Template, and the default version ususally looks like this:

<title><?php bloginfo('name'); ?><?php wp_title(); ?></title>

The best tweak I’ve seen to optimize this tag comes from Stephen Spencer, who suggests using the following code for page title tag (omit the “#”):

<title><?php if (is_home()) { print "whatever title I want to have on my blog home page."; } else { wp_title(' '); print " : "; bloginfo('name'); } ?></title>

This tweak does a couple different things. First, it allows you to use a more descriptive, keyword-rich title for your blog’s main page. And second, for the individual post pages, it will use the title of your post as the page title, which is another reason to follow the advice I mentioned in #1 above.

5. Use the related posts plugin – Alex Malov’s Related Entries plugin is a neat little addition to any WP blog. Not only does it enhance your blog’s usability, but it also helps create a dense link structure throughout your site, which makes it easier for the search engine spiders to find and index older blog posts.

6. Use the Google sitemap plugin – According to Google:

    “Google Sitemaps is an easy way for you to submit all your URLs to the Google index and get detailed reports about the visibility of your pages on Google.”

WordPress user Arne Brachold has made the sitemap creation and submission process fairly simple with his Google Sitemap plugin, which was recently updated for WP 2.0. This plugin will create a sitemap for you and submit it to Google.

Additionally, Elliot Kosmicki offers a script that will convert your Google sitemap into a Yahoo compliant sitemap that you can submit to Yahoo.

7. Add meta keyword tags and Technorati tags to your posts automatically – although it’s questionable whether or not meta keywords are still valuable when it comes to SEO, ultimately, they can’t hurt. As far as Technorati tags, they have little impact on SEO, but they can help increase your traffic directly from Technorati, so it’s a good idea to use them.Rick Boakes created the Autometa plugin that will add both tags to your posts automatically.

Another simple and effective Technorati tag generator I’ve used is Broobles’ Simple Tags plugin.

8. Validate your code – Use the W3C Markup Validation Service to ensure the code behind your pages is clean and valid. If you find your pages have errors in the code, hire or make friends with a savvy web developer to help you clean it up. See Google’s Information for Webmasters for more info on creating a technically valid site.

The 15 Best SEO Tips for WordPress in 2011

So without further ado, I’m very pleased to share with you 15 of the best SEO tips for WordPress in 2011. Let’s make this year our best year ever.

   1. Create Amazing Content: You’ll probably want to viciously punch my hansom face for leading this list with such a clichéd topic, but it’s undeniably true and far too many of you are still failing to produce material that truly appeals to your viewers. If you were producing something amazing, the world would be beating down your door trying to get to it.
   2. Link to Amazing Content: It’s always a good idea to point your users toward resources on other websites that will be helpful for them. It shows security as a thought leader in your niche when you’re willing to suggest to your readers that they leave your site, and search engines favor sites that link to other websites that it views as both generally authoritative and relevant to your articles.
      Special Note: Don’t link to other sites with the hope of getting something in return. Find resources that are genuinely helpful and share them with your readers. People will respect you for it.
   3. Sprinkle Your Keywords Throughout Your Articles: The term keyword refers to the word or phrase that you hope to be listed for on Google search. Once you’ve identified a term that you’d like to be listed for, be sure to use that term a few times throughout your article. Do this is small portions, because if you do this too much you’re a spammer using a tactic that we refer to as keyword stuffing.
   4. Use Your Keyword in the Title: This is one of the strongest ways to get listed for a search term. However, it is again incredibly important to remember that you must not practice keyword stuffing. Only put your keyword in the title if you’re able to make it sound fun, exciting and engaging to your readers. You don’t have to sacrifice your quality to implement this or any of these 15 SEO tips for WordPress.
   5. Enable Trackbacks: Trackbacks are a neat system that allow links to be created in your comments section to anyone who links to your articles. With them enabled, it’s a great way to encourage people to link to you which in turn will help to build your site’s authority.
   6. Optimize Your URL Structure (Pretty Permalinks): We call these pretty permalinks and they provide much more information about your page to search engines. You should change your website URL’s so that they do not display like this: http://www.the-websol.blogspot.com/?page_id=1 but instead let’s make them look like this: http://www.www.the-websol.blogspot.com/about.  Here’s how we do that. Under the settings panel click on permalinks. Select custom structure and input the following code (just put in what comes after the equals sign into the fields):
      Custom Structure = /%postname%/
      Category Base = category
      Tag Base = tag
   7. Optimize Images In Your Posts: When you can illustrate your topics and articles with attention grabbing artwork or photography people are more likely to view your content. I personally use Flickr’s Creative Commons Search to find excellent photography. As you work to do that, be sure to use image titles and alt text that adequately describe both the image and the content of the article.
   8. Provide a Google Sitemap: Google likes it when you provide them with an easy-to-read overview of all the pages on your site. The easiest and most effective way to deliver this much needed SEO tool is to simply install the WordPress plugin called Google XML Sitemaps. This plugin will do all the hard work for you and automatically update every time you add new posts to your site.
   9. Customize Each Post’s Slug: When you are writing your article, the ’slug’ field that is located just below the title of the article will determine the website address of the article. So if I enter ‘5-crucial-tips-for-wordpress-users‘ for the slug then the website address of this article will behttp://www.sitesketch101.com/5-crucial-tips-for-wordpress-users. Search engines that see that your website URL’s have the same keywords as your meta description, title, keywords and your content will be seen as being even more consistent.
  10. Interlink Keywords Between Articles: Internal links are a powerful way to let Google know what your articles are about, and they’re a terrific way to increase page views across your site as they invite your readers to click through to read other articles. Do you interlink your articles?  You should.
  11. Provide Valid XHTML Code: There are, in fact, several reasons that you should take the time to validate your website to the standards of the World Wide Web Consortium. If you know anything about the basics of html then getting started won’t be difficult. Simply click through to the W3C Validator, type in the name of your website, and then follow the instructions that it provides you for resolving each issue.
      Advanced: Although Google clearly states that they will not dock a website for invalid code, you won’t ever have to worry about them missing anything if your site is semantically accurate.
  12. Cache Your Blog’s Content: WordPress is a php based system that generates pages on the fly. In other words, your home page doesn’t actually exist. It is created fresh every time someone tries to load it. WordPress looks at a database full of variables which include the articles, the post titles, the sidebar widgets and everything else and compiles them into a page and then delivers it based on the settings and options that you’ve chosen in the control panel. WP Super Cache and W3 Total Cache are WordPress plugins that allow that generated page to be stored as a real static page so that the next person to view it doesn’t have to wait for it to be created. This drastically reduces the time it takes a viewer to see your pages and increases the possibility of keeping more readers. This means that your content will always be lightning fast.
  13. Install a WordPress SEO Plugin: In your plugin manager click on “Add New.” Do a search for “Headspace SEO” and install that plugin. Activate the plugin and then go back to your article manager. If you create or edit an article you will now see several fields at the very bottom of the page that include title, keywords, and description. On each article, you will want to fill out the last two at least. Check out the following three articles for more information about setting up your Headspace SEO installation:
      SEO Tips & Tricks for Your WordPress Blog
      Supercharged SEO: A Guide to Headspace 2
      WordPress SEO Made Simple With Headspace
  14. Recycle Old Posts and Revive Old Permalinks: The art of recycling an old post simply means that you take an article that was previously published, let’s say five or six months ago, and add new life and excitement to it and republishing it. If you want to keep growing the ranking authority of your most powerful articles from last year then be sure to leave the permalink alone. This allows you to bring in a fresh wave of links to a page that already ranks in Google.
      Note: For more information on implementing this principle successfully, check out How to Effectively Recycle Old Blog Posts.
  15. Link to Related Posts: My final piece of advice is to install WordPress Related Posts Plugin and begin linking to 4 or 5 similar articles at the bottom of each article. This is both a terrific way to guide your readers to more of your articles on similar topics and it’s a terrific way to guide search engines around your site.