SEO Friendly URL Structure For Wordpress

Have you ever think what’s the most SEO friendly link structure in WordPress? most often asked this question by new users. That’s because in the past, the default WordPress URL structure was not SEO friendly at all. However that’s changed now. In this article, i will explain WordPress SEO friendly URLs, and how you can customize your WordPress permalinks.

 

What is a SEO Friendly URL? 

 

Before i go to deep into WordPress permalinks, it’s important that i define what is a SEO Friendly URL.

 

SEO Friendly URLs contain keywords that explain the article, and they’re easy to read by both humans and search engines. They also improve your chances to rank higher in search engines.

Example of a SEO friendly URL:

http://www.example1587.com/how-to-install-wordpress/

So what does a non-SEO friendly URL look like?

http://www.example1587.com/?p=10467

By default, WordPress now uses the post name in the URL which is the most SEO friendly URL structure. 

So why do beginners still ask us for best permalink structure?

That’s because in the past, WordPress did not use pretty URLs also known as permalinks. The default used to be the non-SEO friendly example that i shared above.

This was changed in WordPress 4.2. If you recently installed WordPress, then your site URLs are SEO friendly.

You can easily verify your permalink settings in your WordPress admin area.

• Also Read:  How to do On Page SEO For Wordpress

The Permalink Settings Explained

 

In WordPress, links are called Permalinks (short for permanent links). You’ll see the term permalink structure and URL structure being used often. 

First thing you need to do is to visit the Permalinks settings page in your WordPress admin area. 

Simply click on Settings link in the admin menu and then click on Permalinks. This will take you to a page that looks like this: 

Wordpress permalink Setting

Click on Image to Zoom

 

As you can see there are number of choices available.

• Plain http://www.example1587.com/?p=123
• Day and name http://www.example1587.com/2016/01/22/sample-post/
• Month and name http://www.example1587.com/2016/01/sample-post/
• Numeric http://www.example1587.com/archives/123
• Post name http://www.example1587.com/sample-post/
• Custom Structure
  Choose your own URL structure using available tags.
  

Let me explain these options a bit, and how useful they are for users and SEO. 

The first option which is called plain used to be the default WordPress URL structure. This is not an SEO friendly option. 

The day and name option is somewhat SEO friendly as it has the post name in it. However, with dates, the URL becomes too lengthy. But more importantly after some time your content seems outdated, even if you regularly update it. Similarly, the month and name option also runs the risk of being dated. 

However if you’re a news publication, then you want to have the dates in your URL to show the recency and improve the user experience.

In our opinion, those two structures are only good for news sites. Business sites that are hoping to create ever-green content should avoid it.

Post name option is the most SEO friendly because it is short and pretty.

If you are running a larger publication, then you can use a custom structure that can also be SEO friendly. 

In order to use a custom URL structure, you will need to add special tags in the custom structure box. For example, i was used: 

/%category%/%postname%/

Notice how each tag is wrapped between percent signs. Also notice the trailing slashes / before, after, and between the tags. 

At last, Don’t forget to click on the save changes button after choosing your permalink structure.