11 Tips for Creating the Best WordPress Permalink Structure

What’s the best WordPress permalink structure?

Your WordPress permalink structure has a big impact on how your website performs in the search results.

So you need a permalink structure that is SEO friendly.

Here are 11 tips for creating the best WordPress permalink structure.

But first: what is WordPress permalink structure?

What Is WordPress Permalink Structure?

A permalink is the web address of an individual blog post.

It's a way of giving a piece of content a permanent address. That means it can be located and referenced even when it no longer appears on the home page.

A permalink’s structure is simply the way the permalink has been put together.

11 Tips for Best WordPress Permalink Structure:

In your WordPress dashboard, if you go to Settings > Permalinks, you’ll see the 6 options available for permalink structure:

‘Plain’ is the least user-friendly because it’s not memorable and doesn’t tell the user what the post or page is about.

Options #2 and #3, which include tags for year, month, and date are good for news sites, where it’s important to know when a story was published.

But they're not good for a blog as your content is effectively ‘time stamped’. If you're creating evergreen content the last thing you want is a date.

‘Numeric’ (Option #4) creates a URL that is not good for either humans or search engines, as it doesn't indicate what the post is about.

Custom Structure allows you to use as combination of tags in the URL, such as 'year', 'author', 'category' etc. This will create a longer URL, so 'custom structure' should be avoided.

The best option, and the one used on most blog sites is 'Post name': it's simple and keeps your URL as short as possible.

Using your keyword in the permalink signals to Google and other search engines what your article or blog post is about. 

It will help you rank for that keyword in the search results.

Ideally, your 'slug' (the part of the URL that comes after your domain name) should contain  the keyword alone.

For example, if your blog post is about 'tips for creating lead magnets', your ideal permalink your be: https://yourdomain.com/creating-lead-magnets

By default, WordPress will create a slug for you. But it will be way too long.

Here's an example:

The full text of the slug that WordPress added is this:

11-best-tips-for-creating-lead-magnets-that-build-your-list-fast

Remove everything that WP inserted except for the keyword ('creating lead magnets').

Separate the words in your permalink with hyphens. Otherwise neither search engines nor humans will understand (from the permalink what the page is about:

Instead of this:

https://yourdomain.com/createleadmagnets

Do this:

https://yourdomain.com/create-lead-magnets

Your content may be 'evergreen', as valid today as it was when you wrote it.

But if your permalink contains a date from 5 years ago, very few people will click on it in the search results.

Stop words are words such as 'at', 'any', 'before', 'which'.

They are words that don't help search engines understand what your content is about.

Using them in your permalink is therefore a waste of valuable space.

Here's a list of stop words.

Removing stop words from your permalink will give you more space for keywords.

HTPPS at the front of your permalink indicates that your domain has an SSL certificate.

Domains that have SSL certificates are more secure than domains that don't.

If you don't have an SSL certificate, information passing between your website and your visitors can be intercepted by hackers.

Google is trying to make the Internet a safer place. So they have made SSL certificates a ranking factor.

If your site doesn't begin with HTTPS, it won't rank as high in the search results as a website that does.

The 'www' part of your URL is unnecessary and takes up valuable space.

You can remove the 'www' portion of your URL in the WordPress admin area.

Go to Settings and then General and enter your domain name without the 'www'.

Categories are an additional section that some people add to their URLs.

In this example, the category is /email-marketing/:

https://yourdomain.com/email-marketing/create-lead-magnets

Categories may have some value.

They allow you to add more keywords to the URL and they help search engines and humans understand how your site is organized.

But categories make your permalink longer. 

And they also create the possibility of accidentally having duplicate content (i.e. the same post published under different categories).

Your permalinks will look tidier and be more legible without categories.

Do you already have categories in your permalinks and  want to remove them?

Here's how to do it:

METHOD 1:

1. Go to Settings > Permalinks

2. In ‘Custom Structure’ add /%category%/%postname%/ after your domain

3. In ‘Category Base’ insert a single dot in the empty field

4. Click ‘Save’

METHOD 2:

Download and install the ‘Remove Category URL’ plugin:

Then follow the plugin instructions.

Shorter URLs perform better in the search results.

The shorter the URL, the better from an SEO standpoint.

Moz suggests keeping your URLs under 100 characters, but a study by backlinko suggests URLs should be even shorter.

Backlinko studied the average length of URLs in the top 10 positions across more than 1 M Google search results.

These are the average characters per URL they found:

• Position #1 – 50 characters
• Position #2 – 55 characters
• Position #3 – 57 characters
• Position #4 – 58 characters
• Position #5 – 59 characters

Here’s the chart showing Backlinko’s findings:

Here again are the 10 tips for best permalink structure:

1. Use the 'Postname' Option in the WP Permalink Settings
2. Use Your Keyword in the Permalink
3. Don't Let WordPress Create Your Slug For You
4. Use Hyphens in the Permalink
5. Don't Use Dates in your Permalink
6. Remove 'Stop' Words from Your Permalink
7. Use HTTPS in Your Permalink
8. Remove 'WWW' from Your Permalink
9. Don't Use Categories in Your Permalink
10. Keep Your Permalinks as Short as Possible

Follow these simple WordPress permalink tips, and you'll have an SEO advantage over most other websites.