An introduction to permalinks

Just recently, I had someone evaluate my blog. They liked the content and what I’d done so far, but there were definitely some areas that they thought I could improve in. We began chatting and got around to talking about permalinks. In case you aren’t aware, permalinks are “URL’s that point to a specific blogging entry, even after the blogging entry has passed from the front page to the archives.” When you open up WordPress, and click on the “Options” tab, and find the tab entitled “permalinks.” After clicking on the permalinks tab, you are given options to edit their structure. It was recommended to me, by the man that evaluated my blog, that I change my permalink structure from a “numeric” style to a “date and name based” style to improve my site’s search engine rankings.

Now, don’t get me wrong, it’s very easy to change the structure of my current permalinks by simply clicking the circle next to “date and name based” and saving my new format. The problem with switching formats after a fair amount of posts have been posted on your blog — is that all of your website’s backlinks (links from other site’s to your site) are lost… As I began scrolling through various popular blogs, I figured that I must’ve made a vital blogging mistake by not using the “date and name based” permalink structure.

I asked a question, a great article was written in response

I dropped an e-mail to the dnSEO.net webmaster asking if he thought it would be a wise move to change my permalink structure to a “date and name based” format and if so, whether there was an easy way to do it without ruining all of my site’s backlinks. I figured that he was much more knowledgeable about permalinks for SEO than myself — after all, his site’s niche is Search Engine Optimization. I asked him if he knew of a way to switch my permalink structure from “numeric” to a “date and name based” style without having to literally carry out a bunch of hardcore editing. Astrit, the dnSEO webmaster, was nice enough to blog about my question and enlighten his visitors on my permalink dilemma. He wrote a great article entitled: WordPress 301 Permalink (URL) Redirect that I highly recommend you check out, if you haven’t already. It really taught me a lot about permalinks and I am very thankful for his help!

The truth about permalink structure

The truth about permalink structure is that “keyword-rich permalinks” a.K.a. “date and name based permalinks” will actually get you better search engine rankings. There are still sites like the Digital Point forums which use “numeric” style permalinks that are extremely popular. Changing permalink structure from “numeric” to “date and name based” may currently be a great Search Engine Optimization move for AndrewPavelski.com at the moment. My initial fear with changing my permalink structure was that I would get my site banned from search engines like google for having “duplicate content” with different URL’s — (I thought that if I were to change my site’s permalinks to a “date and name based” structure, all of the current links to my website, from other websites, would get indexed as “duplicate content” by search engines). As Astrit began to do a little bit more research on the permalink topic, he realized that the latest version of WordPress automatically adapts and changes the structure of permalinks with no needs for a specialized plugin.

What am I going to do about my permalink dilemma?

From here on out, my first step is going to be to update my WordPress to the latest version. It seems complicated to me, but I think I can manage to do it. After I download my latest version of WordPress, I think that I will probably change the style of my permalinks to a “date and name based” format. After updating my version of WordPress and switching the permalink structure, I will probably lose rankings for my inner pages, until my old URL’s get replaced with the new ones in the SERP’s of the search engines.

Why did I use “numeric” style permalinks in the first place?

I am honestly not sure what prompted me to initially select a “numeric” permalinks style. I think that I thought it appeared more organized and never really even thought about permalinks until my website evaluator made a comment about my “numeric” URL structure. I am not sure what style is standard on WordPress, but when starting out, I highly recommend that you use a “date and name based” permalink structure in order to apply a little bit of SEO to your website! Yeah, it may cost you some search engine rankings in the short-term, but if your blog is newer or you don’t have much content, it won’t even make a noticeable difference.

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