Out of the box, WordPress has a permalink structure that contains the post ID and nothing else. Not the most search-engine friendly URL structure.
This video shows you how to configure your URL structure to include category names and post names – a structure that has great SEO.
I’m very new to all of this. I did notice the date in my post URLs and wanted to get rid of it. Once you opt for a custom field, am I correct in assuming that only applies to any posts you make going forward.
Thanks,
Karen
Yes.
Thanks for the tip, John. Had no idea of the category. Probably not worth to go back and change old permalinks, right?
John, just found some more info on the WordPress page for permalinks. http://codex.wordpress.org/Using_Permalinks
It actually mentions you may get scaling problems once you have a couple of hundred posts using category/post-name/..
See below:
For performance reasons, it is not a good idea to start your permalink structure with the category, tag, author, or postname fields. The reason is that these are text fields, and using them at the beginning of your permalink structure it takes more time for WordPress to distinguish your Post URLs from Page URLs (which always use the text “page slug” as the URL), and to compensate, WordPress stores a lot of extra information in its database (so much that sites with lots of Pages have experienced difficulties). So, it is best to start your permalink structure with a numeric field, such as the year or post ID.
Thanks, Gunnar! I wonder what @Remarkablogger would say about this…
Hey John,
I’m using date and name: http://frankdickinson.me/2010/08/18/sample-post/
because I thought it was needed for my Archives builder. Wondering if there is a way around this?
[...] Instead, choose a permalink structure that is keyword rich, like categories and post names. Watch How to Create SEO-Friendly Permalinks to learn how to configure these basic settings. [...]
[...] Instead, choose a permalink structure that is keyword rich, like categories and post names. Watch How to Create SEO-Friendly Permalinks to learn how to configure these basic [...]