BLOG

How To Create WordPress Permalink Structure For SEO?

Setting up a solid WordPress permalink structure is critical in a digital world where good search engine optimization plays a critical role in your website’s visibility. By permalink structure, we mean all of the permalinks on your website, like pages, posts, and even categories and tags.

Fortunately, if you use WordPress, this popular CMS platform includes a variety of solutions right out of the box that allows you to create a search engine and user-friendly permalink structure. If you want more detailed customization, several plugins can take your permalink strategy to the next level.

Before we start sharing our tips and exploring different ways to create and set up WordPress custom permalinks, let’s first define a permalink and why it’s essential for your website.

What Is Custom Permalink In WordPress?

Permalinks, which are derived from the words “permanent” and “link,” represent the URLs of the content on your WordPress site, such as your pages, posts, categories, tags, and so on. People use these permalinks to access a specific page or post on your site, while search engines use them to link to your site.

A custom permalink is a URL structure used for a specific WordPress page that is configured properly, so it does not affect the settings of other permalinks or your WordPress URL structure as a whole.

Permalinks are important because they represent your content in some ways and can tell people what to expect if they click on a specific page or post, which can encourage more people to check them out.

Similarly, permalinks indicate to search engines what the page or post will be about, which can improve your page ranks and, as a result, the visibility of your content. As a result, you are strongly advised to assign appropriate permalink names to various types of content on your WordPress website.

Importance of Customized Permalinks

Custom Permalinks can benefit your business by saving time and money while optimizing site performance with:

1. Readability

Using personalized permalinks improves the readability of the link you’re using. If the custom permalink mentions the topic of the post, the reader will be more likely to have a preconceived notion when they click on the link. However, the link’s readability suffers if the permalink is just a string of characters with no meaning.

2. Presentable

A custom website URL improves the overall presentation of any website, making it more presentable than before. A customized website URL improves the overall look and feel. Individuals who understand the significance of the permalink will find proper use of it beneficial.

These are the primary reasons for using a WordPress custom URL or permalink. In more detail, we’ll go over how to change permalinks in WordPress.

Methods To Create Custom WordPress Permalinks

In WordPress, there are two methods for creating a custom permalink. When users discuss changing the permalink of a WordPress post, they frequently refer to the post slug. We will demonstrate how to change the post slug.

However, in some cases, users may wish to create a unique URL structure, which we will demonstrate in WordPress.

Method 1: Modifying The Slug Of A Permalink

The term slug in WordPress refers to the URL-friendly name of a post, page, tag, or category. WordPress generates it automatically and uses it in the URL when you create a new item.

For instance, if you write a post titled ’20 Most Amazing Coffee Shops in Manhattan,’ WordPress will generate a post slug similar to this: 20-most-amazing -coffee-shops-in-manhattan. Your post URL would appear something like this, depending on the permalink structure you use:

https://example.com/2016/02/29-best-coffee-shops-in-manhattan/

The same is true for your pages, custom post types, tags, categories, taxonomies, etc. If you want to change the slug part of the permalink, that’s simple. That is possible without installing any plugins or writing any code.

Method 2: Modifying The Slug Of A Post Or Page

Editing a WordPress post, page, or custom post type is the simplest way to change the slug part of the URL.

Look just below the post title on the post edit screen. The post URL will be displayed, along with an edit button. You can change the post slug by clicking on this edit button. In your post slug, you can use alphanumeric characters and dashes.

Choose a post slug that contains keywords that people would use to search for that content for a more SEO-friendly URL.

Changing Category and Tag Slugs

It is also very simple to change the slug of categories and tags. Navigate to Posts, then Categories and WordPress displays a list of categories.

You can navigate to a category and click the quick edit link. WordPress will display the category’s title and slug. To save your changes, change the URL slug and click the update button.

The same method applies to tags as well as custom taxonomies. 

Method 3. Creating Completely Custom Permalinks

Changing the post’s slug does not affect the actual permalink structure. What if you wished to modify the permalink for a single post, page, post, or taxonomy? For example, suppose the URL of your post looks like this:

https://example.com/2015/02/20-most-amazing-coffee-shops-an-manhattan/

If you wish to replace it with the following:

https://example.com/best-Imsts/coffee-shops/top-coffee-shops-in-manhattan

Let’s look at another illustration. Your WordPress category URL looks like this:

https://example.com/category/travel

For this particular category, you should replace it with: https://example.com/travel/

Typically, this would necessitate a change to your permalink structure, affecting all your URLs.

Here’s how to create a custom URL without affecting other URLs on your website. Install and activate the Custom Permalinks plugin as your first step. After activation, you can modify a post or page and change its URL to whatever you choose.

Summary

WordPress’s permalinks are a very handy tool. You can utilize them to improve user experience and search engine rankings. You can set them to function just the way you like for all post kinds, taxonomies, and custom slugs. If you adhere to the preceding instructions, your permalinks will be optimized.

Selling up Redirects for Custom Permalinks in WordPress 

When adding a custom permalink to a new post, you do not need to be concerned about redirects. If, however, you change the URL of a post that has already been published, you must configure redirects.

Equally applicable to your categories and tags. If a category/tag archive page were indexed, it would no longer be accessible when the URL is changed. Users and search engines must be redirected to the new address. Unless you implement redirects, users arriving at the old address from search engines and other websites will be unable to access the page.

This post should have helped you establish a custom WordPress permalink. You may also be interested in How to Move from Live URL to WordPress and How to Repair Pluggable.php File Errors in WordPress.

wp tech support

 

Leave a Reply

Comment policy: We value comments and the time that visitors to our blog spend to give feedback. Please note that all comments are manually moderated and any deemed to be spam or promotional will be deleted.