Permalink Structure: Is There An Optimal Way?

Writing by Nick Stamoulis Tweet

If you are struggling with developing a protocol for your permalinks structure, whether you have a blog or a static website, then maybe I can help. There really is no right way or wrong way, but there are a few effective ways to structure your long URLs, or permalinks for search engine optimization. What I would not do is allow my CMS or other system to do it for me. I’d take the initiative and be proactive, making those permalinks search engine optimization friendly.

The worst kind of permalink are dynamic URLs. That’s where you have a ? and other special characters in your URL, rendering it uncrawlable by the search engines. Anything that acts as a stumbling block to search engine spiders needs to be shunned.

The first principle to developing those permalinks is to ensure that they include your keyword. An URL with a keyword is better than an URL without one. Secondly, go for shorter if possible. If not, then try to use a permalink with a date – this is particularly useful for blogs where you may end up with two or more blog titles with the same title, or similar ones. A date can help find the right one when you go searching your archives.

WordPress actually offers you several alternatives for structuring your permalinks and I prefer any of them over the default.

The first structure offered by WP is the date and name permalink structure. It looks like this:

http://www.yourdomainname.com/2009/01/15/sample-post/

The advantage here is that whatever your sample post name is will be in the permalink and if it includes your primary keyword then you’ll meet principle No. 1. The downside is it’s at the end of the permalink.

The month and name permalink structure (below) has the same strengths and weaknesses with the added weakness of the date being less specific:

http://www.yourdomainname.com/2009/01/sample-post/

The numerical structure is the weakest because is doesn’t include the name of your actual post and therefore you lose the chance to include your keyword:

http://www.yourdomainname.com/archives/123

The structure that I like best is a custom structure and puts your post name in front of the date, like this:

http://www.yourdomainname.com/sample-post/2009/01/15/

For a static website, you can take the date off unless you want to include each update of your web pages in your site archives. Otherwise, the date can be deleted. The sample-post part of your permalink will be the name of your file and ideally you want that to be the title of your page or a phrase that includes your keyword. That’s the best structure for your permalink URLs to achieve the best SEO.