Posted by Ben Cook as Blog Optimization
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.
2 Responses
Brad Huntsman
January 17th, 2008 at 1:29 am
1Ben, you mentioned not having category names in the permalink, what about dates.
In my permalink it includes the date for the archive, but not “archive”. I didn’t realize I had the option when I first set it up. Would you suggest “archive” instead - even if I’ve already got links out there?
Also, I don’t have a TrackBack URI as you’ve got, but the regular URL seems to get folks where they need to go. And the link still shows up in my comments when a link is used. Is the Trackback URI a necessity?
Charles Hamel
January 21st, 2008 at 12:57 am
2I have mine with the name of the post, I hope this is a sufficient way to organize the permalinks.
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