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How to create SEO titles using Permalinks
Search Engine Optimization, Blogging Tips July 2nd, 2007
Visited 4204 times, 1 so far todaySomeone wrote a comment on my site saying they liked the way the links ended with .htm and if there was a plugin to do that? So I decided to write this article with the purpose of being able to share with you exactly what I did. What I did is very simple and can be done very easily from your wp-admin panel. It is called Permalinks and can be customized by going to Options - Permalinks.
What is Permalinks?
Permalinks basically means permanent URLs to your blog posts, categories, archives and pages For example, the Permalink for this blog post is:
http://bloggerholic.com/search-engine-optimization/how-to-create-seo-titles-using-permalinks-31.htm
You can customize your permalink structure very easily from the WordPress admin panel. I recommend you do this because firstly it looks a lot better than the default look (http://example.com/?p=N) and secondly, it has a significant effect on your search engine optimization. If you don’t change the default Permalink structure, then your url will look something like:
http://domainname.com/index.php?p=13where 13 is the post number.
You can see that the default structure users question marks and numbers that look ugly, however WordPress offers you the ability to change this so you can have it look the way it does on this site.
There are three types of permalinks:
Default: (not very pretty…)
The default looks like http://bloggerholic.com/?p=123 Where p=123 is the post number. The reason why they use this as the default is because it works on all server environments like Linux and Windows. A lot of people don’t like the default look though for obvious reasons, it doesn’t look professional as some of the other options.
The three other options you have are:
1) Date and name based:
http://bloggerholic.com/2007/07/01/sample-post/
The above will show the date the post was created as well as the name of the post title
2) Numeric
http://bloggerholic.com/archives/123
3) Custom
You can specify what custom structure you want to have. Now this is the option I go for in all my sites and this is the structure I specify:
/%category%/%postname%-%post_id%.htm
If you have more than one post with the same name then it can cause confusion so that’s why I add post_id%.htm at the end.
So now my url for this page for instance will be……
http://bloggerholic.com/search-engine-optimization/how-to-create-seo-titles-using-permalinks-31.htm
Other options you can specify as your custom structure are
/%postname%
/%year%/%postname%/
I’m sure you get the general idea now 
The title of your post will become part of the url for your post. Now you can see the big SEO advantage here can’t you? You are now able to use those keywords as part of your url which increases your chances of being found by the search engines.
5 EASY STEPS TO CHANGE YOUR PERMALINK
- Login to your WordPress administration panel
- Select Options->permalinks from the navigation menu
- On the permalinks page, you will see a list of “common options”. Select the option you want to go for taking into consideration the tips i have written in this article. I recommend the custom structure.
- Click on “update permalink structure”
- Now you will some code at the bottom of the page. You need to copy and paste this code into the file “called .htaccess and it can be found in your www root folder. Save the file and upload.
That’s it your done! How easy was that
Proceed to: How to remove category base from permalinks
Go back to:Wordpress for Dummies
This book “Wordpress for Dummies” provides you with everything you need to get up and running with WordPress. The book covers blogging basics, choosing a hosting solution or setting up a host, developing blog content, syndicating blog posts with RSS, launching a specialized blog (including podcasting, photoblogging, mobile blogging, and videoblogging), and even earning revenue.
It Includes help on every aspect of installing and using WordPress, illustrations from real-world WordPress blogs, step-by-step tutorials on key topics, and insights from bloggers who have used WordPress
Read the Comments
[ # 20 ] Comment from Stephen Cronin [July 10, 2007, 3:49 am]
Good advice, but just a note about using %category% as part of the permalink structure:
If you’re just starting out, be careful about using /%category%/, unless you are very sure that your categories won’t change.
I fell into this trap - as my blog matures, I need to tweak the categories, which would break my permalinks.
[ # 63 ] Comment from Ramachandra [July 24, 2007, 5:54 am]
very well explained. I was on the lookout for such a tutorial on post ending. Many thanks for the same
[ # 12 ] Comment from Rich [July 6, 2007, 12:02 am]
Thanks a lot man! I really appreciate it:)