WordPress SEO friendly URL structure

You can increase your chances of ranking higher in search engines such as Google and others by using a SEO friendly URL structure which by default are the largest source of new visitors to any website. In my experience with SEO, I have seen that Google gives extra weight to the URL structure therefore it is recommended that you follow my post.

I suggest that you do this towards the start of your website, so you don’t have to go through the process of re-indexing your website in search engines because re-indexing your website in search engines is a big mistake.

By default WordPress URL structure is not the most search engine friendly and also not very user friendly. In this post, I will show you how to make SEO friendly URL structure for WordPress that are also user friendly. If you see me use Permalinks structure instead of URL structure, you should know that they are synonymous.

By default WordPress URL structure looks a bit more robotic because it is not user friendly at all let alone not being SEO friendly. This is an example of what a default WordPress URL structure looks like.

http://www.tipifam.com/?p=99

The goal of making the URL structure more friendly is that your users should know before reading the article what it is about by just looking at the URL. The same goal is to be accomplished for search engines as well.

So how to do that?

Step 1: Open the Permalinks Option Page which you can find in your WordPress Admin Panel and then go to Permalinks. Choose Custom Structure option.

Step 2: Pick your custom structure.

I recommend the URL structure of /%category%/%postname%/

If you want a completely static site, then use /%category%/%postname%.html

By using that documentation your URL structure will be keyword rich as it will contain the keyword of the category and the title. Like this:

http://www.tipifam.com/internetmarketing/boost-your-websites-pagerank-with-free-backlink-from-google/

In additional, there are many different options in use. You need to learn a few documentation tags to know the possible URL structure combination.

%year% – The year of the post, four digits (for example 2011).

%monthnum% – Month of the year, two digits (for example 01).

%day% – Day of the month (for example 06).

%hour% – Hour of the day (for example 12).

%minute% – Minute of the hour (for example 30).

%second% – Second of the minute (for example 45).

%postname% – A sanitized version of the title of the post (post slug field on Edit Post/Page panel). For example: I am Tipifam becomes i-am-tipifam in the URL.

%post_id% – The unique ID # of the post (for example 125).

%category% – A sanitized version of the category name (category slug field on New/Edit Category panel). Nested sub-categories appear as nested directories in the URI.

%author% – A sanitized version of the author name.

Tags: search engine optimization, SEO, SEO tips, WordPress tip

Category: WordPress, WordPress tips