For those of you that don’t know what a permalink is, let’s start there. The permalink is the link that is visible in the browser window when you click on the heading of a blog post. This link by default should look something like this.

http://thatblogsite.com/?p=44

Simple right?

As awesome as Wordpress is, they manage to give you a terrible out-of-the-box configuration for permalinks. Not so good. But it’s not hard to change them, and I’ll show you how in just a minute. But first let’s talk about WHY you want to change your permalinks.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

The default permalink structure is absolutely terrible, and serves little to no purpose when it comes to SEO. Why? Well, unless someone is searching for “?p=44″, then you are completely missing the boat when it comes to using your keywords in the title. We all know that incoming links are important for SEO, but, what’s even more valuable is a link that has our targeted keywords in it. A permalink is no different. It’s much more valuable to have a permalink with your keywords, rather than the default “ugly links” that Wordpress comes with.

Readability

I’m sure you’ve also been told that you should be writing for people, not search engines. Well, this is true here as well. The default permalink structure gives people absolutely no idea what they are reading. So, for example, let’s say that your friend Joe links to you on his blog, and uses a direct copy and paste of the permalink rather than adding anchor text. Well, people don’t have any clue what - http://thatblogsite.com/?p=44 means. Wouldn’t it be better if your permalinks were a bit more descriptive? Now, let’s say that Joe copy and pasted your permalink after you changed the structure. Doesn’t - http://thatblogsite.com/your-permalinks-are-ugly - look much better? It’s descriptive, great for SEO, and there is no mystery about what the readers are getting ready to read.

Changing Your Permalink Structure

1. Click on the “settings” tab in the upper right corner of your Wordpress dashboard.
2. Find the “permalinks” tab and click it.
3. Click the “custom structure” tab.  It should be set on default when you get there.  Make sure it’s on “custom structure”.
4. In the “custom structure” box, paste this - /%postname%/
5. DONE!

Pretty easy huh?

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