Tip No. 4 in this month of blogging tips is simple but very effective: create search engine friendly URLs!
This means using your blog software to create human readable URLs for your blog posts, like /category/post-title instead of /blog/?p=241.
These types of URLs are not just more human friendly – they help the search engines understand better what your site is about – thus improving your site’s performance in the search engines.
I prefer the format /category/post-title/. This can be set in Wordpress by going to Options -> Permalinks and clicking the radio button. Enter “/%category%/%postname%/” (without the quotes) into the text box.
Some others prefer to add a date stamp in order to keep titles unique. My arguments against this are that it’s highly unlikely to happen unless you’re running into thousands of blog posts, and it’s better to keep your site structure as “shallow” as possible (more on this later).
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{ 5 comments… read them below or add one }
Depending on the blogging software that you are using there are a lot of options open to you.
Thanks for the blog post!
Thanks for the tip. I just made the changes at my blog!
What about anchor text? Should it be the same as perma link for better search engine ranking or should be different?
This tip is priceless! I’m glad I had come across it early in my first WordPress blog’s life, as it was an easy option to change, and I’ve seen the results pay off BIG time in Google searches!