Permalink Characteristics<\/h2>\n
Let\u2019s start with a quick introduction to URLS.<\/p>\n
Each and every page published on the web has a unique Uniform Resource Locator, commonly known as a URL.<\/p>\n
The URL represents the address of a page and it is expected to remain the same as long as the page is published on the web. Thus, it sometimes referred to as permalink.<\/p>\n
The permalink structure of a website is a term that describes how the permalinks of each and every page will look like.<\/p>\n
Don’t worry if this is confusing now, read on and you will understand in a bit what is the relationship between permalinks and permalink structure and how it affects your SEO.<\/p>\n
Here is an example of a permalink: A permalink is made of two parts:<\/p>\n The website domain can also include the protocol i.e. https:\/\/ or http:\/\/ and or www.<\/p>\n The page slug is what comes after the domain slash (\/).<\/p>\n The max length of a permalink is 2083 characters but in general the shorter, the better.<\/p>\n A permalink should have all the characteristics of an SEO friendly URL<\/strong><\/a>. Best practices are:<\/p>\n It should start with https<\/strong> \u2013 This indicates that the webpage is secure, which means that any information transmitted between the web browser and web server is encrypted.<\/p>\n It should be short and descriptive<\/strong> \u2013 A permalink should be short without having unnecessary information but at the same time, it should describe what a page is about.<\/p>\n For example, look at these two permalinks:<\/p>\n Just by looking at the first one, you know what to expect before visiting a page while the second one contains information that does not help users or search engines.<\/p>\n In many cases, a permalink is shown in the search engine result pages (SERPS) and thus it is important to be meaningful as well.<\/p>\n It needs to include SEO keywords<\/strong> \u2013 SEO keywords<\/a><\/strong> are the search phrases<\/em> users type in a search engines search box.<\/p>\n By including those terms in your permalinks, you give search engines a strong clue about the content of a page and this increases your chances of ranking high for those keywords.<\/p>\n It also gives users a big hint of what to expect by visiting the particular page.<\/p>\n Words in permalink should be separated by dashes<\/strong> \u2013 Any words that make up a permalink should be separated by \u2018-\u2018 and not any other characters.<\/p>\n Permalinks are lowercase<\/strong> \u2013 To avoid any issues, all letters in a permalink should be lowercase. This is because some web servers treat uppercase characters differently.<\/p>\n Should not include stop words<\/strong> – These are common words that don\u2019t add any value or help in understanding the actual content of a page.<\/p>\n For example, words like \u201ca\u201d, \u201cthe\u201d, \u201con\u201d, \u201cand\u201d, \u201cis\u201d, \u201cof\u201d, \u201cyou\u201d and other similar words.<\/p>\n WordPress is one of the most popular CMS platforms and the first platform to use the term \u2018Permalink\u2019.<\/p>\n You can find the \u2018Permalinks Settings\u2019 under SETTINGS.<\/p>\n WordPress gives you a number of options for setting up the URL structure of your posts. The best setting to use is the \u2018Post Name\u2019.<\/p>\n With \u2018Post Name\u2019 your permalinks will not contain any unnecessary information. When you publish a new page, WordPress will take whatever you type in the page title and separate it by dashes \u2018-\u2018.<\/p>\n Although the idea of a permalink is to be permanent<\/em>, there are valid cases where you might want to change it.<\/p>\n For example, during an SEO audit, you might decide to make your URLS shorter by removing date information.<\/p>\n In order not to negatively affect your SEO, you need to \u2018tell\u2019 search engines that you are changing the URL so that they can update their index.<\/p>\n If you make the change without informing them, they will consider it as a new page. This means that any backlinks<\/a><\/strong> pointing to the page will be lost and any users that bookmarked the page will get a 404 error, since the page has changed address.<\/p>\n To avoid these issues and maintain your SEO rankings, you need to add a 301 redirection<\/em> to your .htaccess<\/em> file to inform search engine crawlers about the change.<\/p>\n Here is a step by step example:<\/strong><\/p>\n Let\u2019s say that your current permalink is:<\/p>\n and you want to change it to:<\/p>\n If you are on WordPress you can change the permalink of a page by editing the URL right below the title.<\/p>\n Step 1:<\/strong> Visit the page in EDIT mode, change the URL and click the UPDATE button.<\/p>\n Step 2:<\/strong> Using an FTP program, locate the .htcaccess<\/em> file found in the ROOT folder of your website, download it to your local PC and edit it using Notepad or other text editor.<\/p>\n Step 3:<\/strong> Add the following line and save the file.<\/p>\n Notice that you don\u2019t need to include the domain name for the [source] URL but you need to include the full permalink for the [target URL].<\/p>\n Step 4:<\/strong> Upload the file back to your webserver.<\/p>\n Step 5:<\/strong> Open a new browser window and test and everything is working as expected. If you type the OLD URL in the browser, you should be redirected to the new page.<\/p>\n Step 6:<\/strong> Go to Google Search Console<\/a><\/strong> and use the URL Inspection Tool<\/strong> to make sure that search engines can access the new permalink without any problems.<\/p>\nhttps:\/\/www.reliablesoft.net\/seo-strategy.<\/code><\/p>\n\n
![\"What](\"https:\/\/www.reliablesoft.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/05\/permalink.png\")
How to create SEO Friendly Permalinks<\/h2>\n
https:\/\/www.example.com\/what-is-seo<\/code><\/p>\nhttps:\/\/www.example.com\/2019\/12\/a\/d\/DFI_U.html<\/code><\/p>\n![\"Permalinks](\"https:\/\/www.reliablesoft.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/05\/permalink-in-serps.png\")
Permalinks in WordPress<\/h3>\n
![\"Permalink](\"https:\/\/www.reliablesoft.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/12\/wordpress-permalinks-settings.png\")
How to change the permalink without losing SEO?<\/h2>\n
https:\/\/www.reliablesoft.net\/this-is-a-long-permalink-to-be-made-shorter<\/code><\/p>\nhttps:\/\/www.reliablesoft.net\/permalinks<\/code><\/p>\n![\"How](\"https:\/\/www.reliablesoft.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/05\/changing-permalinks-wordpress.png\")
Redirect 301 \/this-is-a-long-permalink-to-be-made-shorter https:\/\/www.reliablesoft.net\/permalinks<\/code><\/p>\n![\"URL](\"https:\/\/www.reliablesoft.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/04\/url-inspection-tool.png\")