How to Craft Permalinks in WordPress for Better SEO  

Websites that use SEO-friendly URLs or permalinks rank higher in search results. Search engines care about user experience and grasp the URL more easily.  

An SEO-friendly URL should be relevant, include your target keyword, describe what the page is about, use hyphens rather than underscores, and be easy to read. Ideally, it shouldn’t have any dates in it, especially years, because it becomes dated. 

The website should have an SSL certificate for a permalink to be SEO-friendly. This is indicated by a padlock next to the URL. Finally, it can include a customized element. 

What are permalinks? Permalink is another word for URL or a link in WordPress, shortened for permanent links. 

Best Permalink Structure

Optimal permalink structure makes sharing your content easier and increases click-through rates. Using numbers, symbols, and special characters makes it harder for search engines and users to grasp the page’s content.  

Target keywords

The most important element is the target keyword. This is what people type into a search engine to find your page. By having it in the permalink, you’ll potentially rank for it in search results. If you haven’t decided on a target keyword, just use words that are most relevant to your content.

No dates 

Even if you update content regularly, the permalink will reveal the date your material was first published. 

If you already added the date, you can change your permalink. In the WordPress settings, go to Permalinks settings and change the name and day setting to Post name. 

No underscores 

WordPress uses the traditional hyphen to separate words in the permalink. Underscores, on the other hand, blend in and are harder to read. 

Add categories 

If your website is large, experts recommend categorizing your permalinks using WordPress-specific tags. If you have an e-commerce platform, for example, you can add the product category to your permalink to make it easier for visitors (and potential buyers) to see what type of products you have on your site. 

Editing WordPress permalinks 

You can edit a lot of permalink elements, not just the dates. In the settings section mentioned above, you can make your permalink shorter to include a keyword. Click on Update when you’ve finished editing. 

Is changing the permalink structure safe?

It’s not safe to change the permalink structure if you’ve already published your post or page because it can be damaging to SEO and result in your search engine rankings declining. You’ll lose any backlinks you have, as well as referral traffic from users who’ve shared your content on social networks. 

That’s unless you use 301 redirects to redirect old permalinks to new ones rather than edit them. This way, your rankings on Google won’t drop. Your visitors won’t get a 404 not found error or click on a competitor’s link. 

Wrapping up

The SEO-friendliest permalinks are short, include a target or at least a relevant keyword, clearly communicate the purpose of the page, and contain hyphens between words to make them easy to read. They also come with an SSL certificate. 

Long links don’t encourage people to share content because they don’t look appealing in search engine results.