Altering permalinks structure is fairly simple with wordpress and I have already discussed how you can alter your permalinks structure in your wordpress in Optimizing Your Blog URL In Wordpress For SEO to add more SEO value to your url structure. In this section we will dig through the topic little deeply for better understanding.
First select the permalinks under settings option and you will be redirected to a screen that looks like the one shown below in the picture.
Default: Default permalinks structure in wordpress is not that user friendly nor search engine friendly, it doesn’t mean your pages will no be indexed by search engines, it just uses a post id function at the end of your actual url.
Day and name: This url sturcture is little more friendly than the default one, it uses two functions to be displayed on your url, day which refers to the actual date when you made the post and name, refers to the title of your post.
These are the functions it uses in its structure.
/%year%/%monthnum%/%day%/%postname%/
%year% refers to the year when the post is made
%monthnum% refers to which month the post is made
%day% refers to which day in a month the post is made
%postname% refers to the title of the post
Month and name: This url sturcture is little shortened version of the previous one which we just seen, this url structure will only display which year and month when a particular post is made and also the title of the post and it will not display the exact day of a month when a particular post is made.
These are the functions it uses in its structure:
/%year%/%monthnum%/%postname%/
Numeric: This url structure is similar to default one, it uses the word archives and post id in its structure.
These are the functions it uses in its structure:
/archives/%post_id%
Custom Structure: Custom structure is what most people prefer and most SEO professionals prefer and the reason is because you have the control over how you want your url to be displayed, you can add keywords, one of the primary keyword your blog focuses up on in your url which can add value to your SEO campaign you can add categories to be show up on your url or you can choose just the post name to be displayed on your url.
Optional:
There are two options under this setting, category base and tag base, it generally refers to the way you want your wordpress posts to be organised, you can change the way permalinks associated with category and tags work here, you can add which ever word you want your category links or tag links end here, if you leave it blank default value will be used, again don’t be much bothered by this and I would recommend to leave it blank but if you want to add any special words at the end of your category or tag permalinks use this space.
Tags: permalinks in wordpress, url structure, wordpress url structure
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I am Chakkravarthi, full time Blogger, webmaster and wordpress enthusiast . Apart from blogging I like to dwell in to SEO world most of the time.Use wordpress and support the open source community.