WordPress Permalinks

Just a quick update to keep everyone in the loop. I’ve modified the Permalink structure of the blog. There are a few reasons to do this but the biggest is the SEO value it provides. Rather than the URL of a post looking like www.bloggingexperiment.com/?p=5 it will now have the post name included in the URL www.bloggingexperiment.com/archives/permalinks-wordpress-options.php for example.

On other blogs in the past I’ve used the category name in the URL as well to get even more keywords and phrases in the URL, however, I’ve noticed that I occasionally need to switch category names or reorganized my blogs. If the category name is in the URL, every post in the changing category will now have a new URL. While that might not seem like a big deal to some, that’s pretty much an SEO’s worst nightmare. Not only would you have to get the new pages indexed, but you’d effectively lose any and all links to those posts. Of course you could do 301 redirects to point the spiders and visitors in the right direction, but is it really worth it just to include the category in your URL? In my opinion it’s not worth the potential hassle.