WordPress Made Easy

Most people blog so that their words can be spread throughout the internet. Why would you blog and not want any one to read it? You might as well use a diary or journal instead of a blog. One biggie factor that will help your blog be found is the URL structure. Here are some examples of different URL structures that point to the same place (this post).

Ugly URL - www.pressedbyambie.com/?p=256
Pretty URL - www.pressedbyambie.com/first-steps-must-do/customize-permalink-structure/

Notice the pretty URL is very descriptive of the post, and readable. Search Engines love em, and they will hook you up with a better page rank.

Fortunately, Wordress offers a nice plug in to customize and beautify your URL structure. If it’s pretty to search engines, your hit count and page rank should go up. From your WordPress administration page, go to Settings then Permalinks.

There are hundreds of different ways to configure this. Notice you can use the 3 pre-defined structures, or you can use a Custom Structure. I prefer using the Custom Structure and populating the field with this:

I like it because the URL becomes very readable in a structured manner, almost like what webmasters like to call Breadcrumbs.

domain name >> category >> post

It also stuffs keywords into your URL, again, search engines love it. Befriend the search engine, make them your biggest fan and watch your hit count go through the roof.

I would also advise against using dates in your link structure. If you decide to change the date on one of your post, the link will change with it, and there goes your Page Rank.

The most important part of what you have just done is what you are to do next.

DO NOT TOUCH IT AGAIN!

Don’t change it, don’t look at it again. The reason this article is in the “Do This First” category is that once you setup your structure, search engines will cache this. By changing it, you’re going to confuse the heck out of the search engines and you may have to start over with your SEO. There are tricks that can be done with .htaccess to resolve this, but that’s a can of worms your really don’t want to open. Trust me. Spend your time blogging instead of trying to figure out .htaccess.

WordPress, Made Easy…