Before you start posting on your site you should set it up to have the right types of permalinks for your posts. Permalinks are links that go directly to an individual blog post. They are important because the text that comprises the link actually has an impact on it’s search engine ranking.
In order to get this first step right we are going to have to do two things, create quality post titles and get your blog to leverage them in your permalinks, so let’s get to it!
In this post I’ll be talking about how to change settings in wordpress, but most blogging tools will have similar functionality, and these optimization tips definitely apply no matter what blogging tool you are using.
Permalinks and You
The permalinks that wordpress ships with use IDs to locate posts, descriptive keywords are in short supply. To fix this go to Settings -> Permalinks within wordpress, select Custom Structure, and enter /%category%/%postname%/.
If you wish to go even shorter you can just use /%postname%/ which will basically just be the title of your post. However, just using postname, while bringing keywords more to the forefront, can sometimes cause problems when attempting to access other pages or plugins, so I prefer adding the category as well.
Now that you have wordpress doing the right thing you have to make the effort by providing good titles for your posts.
Not Just Good Titles
Alright, so it’s more than just witty titles with good keywords. In wordpress, just under where you set the title for a post, there is an area where you can edit the permalink. This is where you have a chance to shine. Often times your title may be cute, enticing, or flat out long; by editing the permalink you can ensure that you have the accurate keywords you need without any of that distracting debris.
Always remember to separate you words with hyphens, as they tell the search engine to look at the terms individually.
It’s Never Too Late To Start
I said you should do this before you start posting, but many of you already have a blog. Don’t fret you can change settings well into the game, but to ensure that you don’t break existing search results you need to do a little more leg-word. Check out this plugin that allows you to change your permalinks on an existing blog.
A quick sidenote, for those interested, wordpress also has page that talks about How to use permalinks.