Wordpress Permalinks
I must have done this a hundred times, but I still keep forgetting what makes a good permalink structure on Wordpress. So as a result I’m going to post this in here so I can just grab it any time I install a new blog.
Go into Settings->Permalinks and enter the following into the Custom Structure field.
/%postname%-%post_id%.html
This will make the URLs for each post as the post title followed by the post ID. This makes the post title nice and search engine friendly, as well as using the post ID to make the URL unique and to stop Wordpress getting mixed up between posts that have the same name. Adding html to the end makes the page look like a static page, rather than a dynamic page. Although there is some controversy as to whether this has any effect in terms of SEO, I’m old fashioned enough to quite like it.
Philip Norton
Lead Developer, Research and Development
Hi,
Thank you for this post. It was just what I looked for.
I wonder if you could please find time to explain the .html part a little more for a SEO newbee as my self?
anyway, great to find what one is looking for just to copy ‘n past.
You just got your self a back link as a small ‘thank you’
By Michael March 15th, 2009The HTML part is more of a preference really and makes the link look more friendly in terms of usability. Take the link for this page:
labs.justsearching.co.uk/wordpress-permalinks-5.htmlWithout the .html bit on the permalink it looks like this:
labs.justsearching.co.uk/wordpress-permalinks-5Which in my opinion, doesn’t look as nice.
As for the SEO impact of this it is debatable whether this has any impact. As long as the link has the post name and the post id then it should be unique and will rank well for the keywords therein. The end of the permalink can be .html or .php or even .aspx but I think Google will probably view .exe as a bad way to end a url that isn’t a program!
In my opinion I think it makes the page look more like a file, which I think gives is a slight preference in Google. After installing 50+ blogs with this permalink structure and seeing them rank well I can only assume that it works! Might be worth running an experiment to find out for sure…
By Philip Norton March 16th, 2009Hi Philip,
Thank you for your answer.
It’s nice to see a ‘live’ blog.
By Michael March 16th, 2009