WordPress SEOLately I’ve been spending more time working on aesthetics, performance, and friendliness of this site. Now I’ve come to a very important decision to make and that is, should I change my permalink/organizational structure? I’ve read several blogs that say a /%category%/%post-title%/ is the best way to go because it adds depth as well as search engine optimization (SEO) strength since the category can be viewed as another keyword. Based on that, I would assume that a permalink structure that includes subcategories (i.e. example.com/category/subcategory/post-title) would rank even better, no? The criticisms of this structure seems to be that the permalink becomes too long, especially with more descriptive post titles. On the contrary, I’ve also heard that using a permalink structure with no categories and just a post title (example.com/post-title) permits more descriptive permalinks. The only other permalink structure that I’ve considered is the domain/year/month/date/post-title arrangement which is already in use here.

What about a trailing slash, does that matter as well? I’ve seen that discussed a few times and that adding the .html extension provides a little extra SEO weight too but I’ve only seen such things discussed a few times and not in any depth. However, in the video below (WordCamp 2007), Matt Cutts a well known blogger and head of Google’s Webspam team, says that extensions such as .html, .php, .asp, .htm, and others don’t matter whatsoever. It’s interesting that a lot of popular sites (i.e. TechCrunch) use the year/month/day/post-title structure and rank very well, but that observation is clouded by the fact that they have seniority over most other competitors due to the overall lifetime of their site.

What if we examine prominent SEO related blogs or blogs of prominent people that work in the field of search? For instance, Matt Cutts uses the domain/blog/post-title structure but said that including the post date in your URL structure does not affect PageRank flow (see video below at 00:27:00). As a side note and for future reference, I’ve created a SEO Blogs search engine to help discover answers to common SEO questions. Here’s a list of what some popular SEO blogs recommend to be the optimal wordpress permalink structure (found by searching SEO Blog Search Engine for: wordpress and “permalink structure” or “url structure”):

  1. SearchEngineJournal – domain/%postname%/%post_id%/
  2. Yoast – domain/post-title
  3. GrayWolf’s SEO Blog – /%category%/%postname%/
  4. MarketingPilgrim’s Andy Beal – Suggests using a permalink structure that includes numbers, “if you have aspirations of seeing your blog syndicated in Google News” as “One of the requirements for entry is to have at least three numbers in your slugs, so that Google can identify your posts from your other blog content. Using myblog.com/my-post-title would likely preclude you from Google News”
  5. Blue Hat SEO – /%postname%/
  6. Pronet Advertising – Neil Patel suggests domain.com/posttitle

Now that we’ve seen what they suggest, what URL structure do these popular SEO sites actually use? After all, these are considered the authority on search engine optimization and therefore would be expected to implement and use the most effective URL structure, right?

SearchEngineLand.com – domain/postname/post_id/
SeoBook.com – domain/postname/
SeoMoz.org/blog – domain/blog/postname/
MattCutts.com/blog – domain/blog/postname/
SearchEngineWatch.com/blog – blog.domain/postname/
SeRoundTable.com – domain/archives/post_id/
SearchEngineJournal.com – domain/postname/post_id/
TopRankBlog.com – domain/year/month/postname/
PronetAdvertising.com – domain/articles/postname/.html
MarketingPilgrim.com – domain/year/month/postname/.html
SeoChat.com – domain/c/a/category/postname/
SearchEngineGuide.com – domain/author/postname/.php
SeoBlackHat.com – domain/year/month/day/postname/
StuntDubl.com – domain/year/month/day/postname/
Wolf-Howl.com – domain/category/postname/
SeoByTheSea.com – domain/post_id/
JimBoyKin.com – domain/postname/
SeoPedia.org – domain/category/postname/
DavidNaylor.co.uk – domain/postname/.html
BruceClay.com/blog – domain/blog/archives/year/month/postname/.html
BlueHatSeo.com – domain/postname/
SeoRefugee.com/seoblog/index.php – domain/category/year/month/day/postname/
SmallBusinessSem.com – domain/postname/post_id/
Yoast.com – domain/postname/

Okay, obviously there is no consensus here but it appears that the most popular is the domain/post-title structure. The lack of a unanimous or overwhelming majority decision on which URL structure is most beneficial for search engine optimization leaves me to think that permalink structure really is not that big of a deal. That is as long as you include the post title within the URL and the words are separated with hyphens/dashes to permit easy idenfication by Google and other search engines. Thus, the choice of which permalink structure to use may be more of a personal preference issue or there maybe some URL structures that are more user-friendly (i.e. not including dates so content appears fresh to user).  Personally, I think that if I do choose to change my permalink structure it will most likely be changed to the domain/postname option if at all.

Here’s a list of some of Matt’s suggestions for optimizing your WordPress blog:

  1. You may not want to put your blog in the root of your domain and instead add it to a subdirectory named “blog” (not “WordPress”) because at some point you may want to do something else with the domain besides just blogging. Also, when people link to your site you may get a little extra PageRank boost because there are now two sources for which they can link to (example.com and example.com/blog)
  2. Use dashes in your permalinks
  3. Make sure your backlinks are standardized; choose either www or non-www, not both
  4. Include relevant keywords in your titles, and synonyms of those keywords in your title slugs and within the post’s content
  5. Always include alt tags with your images
  6. Use full text feeds to promote loyal readers
  7. Make sure your site is viewable on smartphones and iphones
  8. Implement section targeting if you are using AdSense

Here’s some extra SEO tips from Joost de Valk’s WordPress Optimization Strategies presentation that was delivered at A4UExpo London:

WordPress SEO & Optimisation

View SlideShare presentation or Upload your own. (tags: plugin plugins)

Well, there you have it! That’s what most of the leading SEO professionals are using and saying about what is the optimal URL structure for your WordPress blog. For more related info, check out our list of great free WP SEO plugins and some terrific premium WordPress plugins to beef up your WP site.

Question: What permalink structure do YOU use and, more importantly, WHY did you choose that one?

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