Having a good URL structure is important to get right, as it will benefit your readers as well as the SEO structure of your blog.
When WordPress is first loaded to your website it is set to the default URL structure, which looks like this:
http://travelbloggersguide.com/?p=123
This is the “Plain” URL (and that is the WordPress name for it). Before you get blogging you should change this to something more “pretty”.
In the left hand column of your dashboard, go down to the “Settings” section.
In the settings click Permalinks. There you will be greeted with these options:
Choosing the right URL structure for your blog
I as mentioned, we don’t want to use the default link. I would not use the “Numeric” option either, as that does not tell your readers or the search engines anything about that page either.
There are the two date URL structures:
Day and name: travelbloggersguide.com/2010/12/13/sample-post/
Month and name: travelbloggersguide.com/2010/12/sample-post/
I prefer not to use this link structure, but there are sites that are suitable for this method. If you have a personal daily/frequent travel blog and are blogging in real time, then the dates serves as a guide for when you posted your blog. The date structure also works well for news sites. As news is time specific this is a good way of archiving when the news broke.
Seeing that we have eliminated the first 4 options, that leaves us with the “Custom Structure”.
In this field you can place the following code:
/%category%/%postname%/
I use this in my travel blog at bookmarktravel.com. I have a number of categories, including “Videos” and “Travel Photos”. Here is what an example of what the Video category looks like:
http://bookmarktravel.com/videos/travel-video-bhutan/
Here at Travel Bloggers Guide I use this URL structure:
/%postname%/
which makes this post look like this:
http://travelbloggersguide.com/wordpress-permalinks-create-a-custom-url-structure-for-your-blog/
When you are using the category/postname option it is important to have an idea of what your main categories will be. WordPress also has a default category, “Uncategorized”. This is also an ugly name so make sure your post doesn’t end up being “Uncategorized”.
A full permalinks tutorial can be found on WordPress: Using Permalinks
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