WordPress is one of my favorite platforms to run my websites from because it makes it so simple to create a new website with, add new content, tweak settings and appearances, and it's extremely user friendly. Plus it's free! It can also be very search engine friendly. Part of this is using the best permalink structure. This article will identify what a permalink is, how to set one, and identify the best permalink structure.
Permalinks are the settings in WordPress which dictate how your links and URLs will look like when you create a new post or page in WordPress. The default setting in WordPress is to assign new posts which you make a number. I can't really think of a good purpose for using numbers to identify your posts.
This doesn't tell us anything about what the post is about in the address bar and can make it very difficult if you're trying to spread that link around as is as you and no one else will easily be able to tell what that post is about.
Therefore we need to change the permalink structure to something which is both more user and search engine friendly. How you do this is you sign into your WordPress dashboard, click on the "settings" tab on the left, then the "permalinks" option which appears below that menu. If you never changed this, it will be set to the default of "?p=123".
You'll notice that there are a few options. You can set it to day and name, month and name, numeric, or you can use your categories in a subdomains structure. I recommend going with the custom structure option and adding your own.
The custom structure I recommend that you type here goes "/%postname%/". Note that the quotation marks are NOT part of the code.
Now what this code is going to do is make it so that whenever you create a new post or page, it will be labeled as your post's name. This is reflected both in the title bar, the address bar, and the link itself. So if your site was example.com and you just made a post called "what is the best permalink structure", that post's URL would appear as "example.com/what-is-the-best-permalink-structure/".
This makes the content of the post clearly visible to anyone who sees that URL or title, and more importantly it tells the search engines exactly what that content is about without their having to figure it out for themselves. This will especially help you in ranking well for your search keywords, so make sure that you use your keywords in your title (which you should be doing anyway).
I've put together a video showing me using permalinks which you can check out by clicking this link for what is the best permalink structure.
For a complete video WordPress tutorial to cover the other important SEO and usability points to know, click on this link for how to use WordPress.
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