Search Engine Optimization in WordPress: Use a Semantic Permalink Structure

December 29, 2007 · Filed Under Blogs and SEO 

I have written previously, in the post Search Engine Optimization Starts with the Titles, about the important role your titles play in making your blog more easy to find for the search engines. In that post, I also said that good titles were even more important if you also changed the way your posts were saved, so that the URLs of your postings reflected the titles.

Now, I don’t know how to do that with all the various types of blogging software around, but here is how you can achieve this if you are using a WordPress blog (I found this advice on Chris Pearson’s site, so the credit for finding this out is his):

  • In your WordPress dashboard, visit the Options tab.
  • Next, select Permalinks from the sub-navigation menu.
  • Under the “Common options” heading, you should see four buttons that correspond with the four available permalink structures for WordPress. Select Custom (the last one), and enter /%postname%/ in the text input field.
  • Click on one of the two Update Permalink Structure » buttons, and you’re done!

Oh, and I suppose I took it for granted, but it’s certainly worth noting that using a semantic permalink structure on your site (as I’ve suggested here) is extremely beneficial to your overall search engine optimization. It’s literally something that everyone with a WordPress site should do.

So, that’s how it’s done. Among the tasks involved in search engine optimization (SEO), this is definitely one of the easier one. Nevertheless, as Chris Pearson says, it is also one which is highly important and is extremely beneficial.

– Peter


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