Things you should know when using permalinks

Wordpress is the real way to a truely professional and outstanding blog but many new blogs fail even if they have got good resources since they haven’t configured some simple features of Wordpress to match their audience and provide a strong base for the blog to grow on. One of such features is the Permalink which I shall be discussing the basic things you should be knowing on it in this post.

If people like your post, they would want to save it, bookmark it or send it to friends. And what’s more frustrating(especially when there are several links from the same domain), to have something like blogdomain/?p=10,blogdomain/?p=153, Wordpress default link structure which convey no meaning to the content the link is pointing to.

Wordpress thus offers a nice feature to allow your blog’s links to have a pleasant format, called Permalinks that you can customise to your liking by going to your Wordpress Admin section > Options > Permalinks and configuring things from there.

permalinks

With Permalinks on, your links would be resembling something like :

http://blogosquare.com/2007/06/25/things-you-should-know-for-choosing-the-right-domain-name/
http://blogosquare.com/2007/06/21/the-easiest-way-to-learn-the-top-20-magic-tricks/

with the title’s keywords in the link itself giving clear hint of what that link is pointing to. In the first one, the link to a post with title Things you should know for choosing the right domain name published on the 25th June 2007.

But before you can modify your Permalinks, you need to make sure whether you have got a file name .htaccess(note the dot in front and it’s got no extension) found within your Wordpress install directory holding folders like wp-content,wp-includes,etc. Make sure to unset hidden files if you’ve got such option in your FTP program.

.htaccess file

If it’s present, using your favourite FTP program(I recommend FileZilla) modify the .htaccess file attributes setting the permissions as Writable, Readable and executable by all(chmod 777 for the advanced users) so that you can modify your Permalinks settings from within your Wordpress admin. See the screenshot below for the above configurations on :

setting priviledges

Else if the .htaccess file isn’t present, create a new text file using your favourite text editor(use Notepad if you’re on Windows) and save it as .htaccess with a dot in front(make sure to change the Save as Type to All Files and removing the .txt extension at the end). Then upload it using your FTP program to your Wordpress install directory, where you will find folders such as wp-content,wp-includes,etc. And don’t forget to make it fully accessible like described above.

saving the .htaccess file

Deciding over the most optimised Permalinks structure

Permalinks allows you to set links to various format, something which you should choose carefully once for all since you don’t want to change links’ format when you’ve got decent content which might result hitting the error 404 page(for old links). You may choose between the various link’s format available on the Options > Permalinks section.

I would suggest though for the best results to include the date within the link. That would allow people to browse directly through a month from within a link. For e.g

http://blogosquare.com/2007/05/31/best-of-wordpress-theme-galore/

Removing the last set of keywords, ie best-of-wordpress-theme-galore from the above link, will send you to the archives listing all post on the 31th May of 2007. Removing the 31 will send you to all posts published on May 2007, etc

To set the Permalinks structure to the date version(the best in my opinion) like I’ve told you above, login to your Wordpress admin section > Options > Permalinks > Select Date and name based and click Update Permalink Structure. (Make sure .htaccess file is present and fully accessible as discussed above).

Reaping the SEO benefit behind Permalinks

Setting Permalinks on would be to your greatest advantage since that will allow your post to rank better in the Search Engine Results Page. Keywords in the link will get picked up and your links will be displayed in SERP for any keywords found within the title.

You can further customise your post’s link to reap the most of the Search Engine juice by deciding over which keywords will appear in the link of your post. (Note set this only once, since changing afterwards will result in hitting the 404 wall for the old link). This can be set at the Post Slug area when you’re writing a post.

post slug area

For e.g After writing that post and hitting the publish, the permalink for this post would be :

http://blogosquare.com/2007/07/08/things-you-should-know-when-using-permalinks

including such unnecessary keywords like you, should or when. That’s why after writing the post, I set the Post Slug according to my preference therefore : wordpress-permalinks

which will give the post the following permalink when published :

http://blogosquare.com/2007/07/08/wordpress-permalinks

post slug options

So whenever you’re publishing a post and feels that many keywords in your title won’t rank well in the Search Engines, play around the Post Slug and set the permalink ending you want.

Avoid hitting the Error 404 wall

You should play cautiously with your Permalinks since changing it might result in error 404 page for old links. For e.g you’ve got a post with the following link :

http://blogosquare.com/2007/06/26/how-to-save-money-on-ebay/

And later just feel like you shouldn’t be including the word money in the link. You just edit the post and play with the Post slug to remove the keyword money. But for those having the above link, they will end hitting the error 404 page if they want to read your post again.

To avoid hitting the error 404 for such situations like above or any other ones(for e.g you’ve deleted a post and updated the information by creating a new post), there’s the 301 redirect method which you should be using. That will just redirect the visitor automatically to the new link from an old link which you’ve specified using the 301 redirect.

Let’s redirect a link by using an example :

There was a post of mine that I published reviewing a site but which was later shut down, permalink :

http://blogosquare.com//2007/03/15/download-the-latest-famous-tv-series-for-free/

So that post which was indeed very popular was clearly irrevelant. So I published a similar post updating the information and redirecting people from the old url to the new one, permalink :

http://blogosquare.com/2007/06/04/view-free-videos-on-the-internet/

To do it, open your .htaccess file found within your Wordpress install directory(where such file like wp-content,wp-includes,etc are found) and add the following at the end :

Redirect 301 (old link here without domain part) (new link here with domain)

Therefore :

Redirect 301 /2007/03/15/download-the-latest-famous-tv-series-for-free/ http://blogosquare.com/2007/06/04/view-free-videos-on-the-internet/

for my case. Note the space separating the two and the in the old link, there isn’t the domain part(i.e http://blogosquare.com part). Also that line of code is on a single line. When using redirects, place them after the # END WordPress part in the .htaccess file.

I think I’ve covered some of the basic that you should be knowing before setting off your journey to a truly professional blog. So make sure to play with the Permalinks at the beginning itself so that you do have a good link’s structure, making it easier for you to rank well and finding/browsing your content easier and faster. If you’ve got questions or need further clarification, please use the forum. Thanks for reading through.