SEO Friendly URLs: Just A Myth?
727 words | Last Updated: December 3, 2006 |
Does it really help to set search engine friendly URLs for your WordPress permalinks? For example, will you get SEO points if your post looks like http://www.example.com/article-title rather than http://www.example.com/?p=1234 ? Find out now as we bust the SEO friendly URL myth.
It is NOT true that you need search engine friendly URLs to get your pages listed in the search engines. I have done some searches at Google, for example, and have found entries showing those "unfriendly" question marks in the URLs.
Using search engine friendly URLs, however, will be appreciated by your human readers, because they'll easily see the keywords in the search engine results page. For example, if they are searching for "article title" and your post's URL looks like http://www.example.com/article-title, the "article-title" in the URL will be highlighted.
You will also appreciate it when you view your web stats and discover that your most popular post is /title-of-post rather than /?p=12345, right?
Here's Manuel's recommendation: If you are starting a new WordPress-powered blog, set-up search engine friendly permalinks. If you already have an existing blog which has already been indexed by the search engines, do not change your permalink structure.
"Are SEO friendly URLs harmful? I edited my htaccess file and my site disappeared from the search engine listings!" No, they're not harmful. It's just that the search engines were already used to your non-friendly URLs, and then you suddenly switched. Your old links no longer worked, and that's why your old entries disappeared from the search engines.
"So, what permalink structure should I use?" It depends on your tastes. But whatever you choose, stick with it or the search engines will get grumpy if you keep changing your mind.
Here are some permalink structure suggestions:
Style #1. Place your post title in the root (/%postname%/)
Pro: Shortens your URL and makes it appear closer to your site's top folder.
Con: Your "Date" archives will have a longer URL, because instead of appearing as /2006/11 it will appear as /date/2006/11.
Style #2. Place your post title in an "archives" folder (/archives/%postname%/)
Pro: This helps shorten your "Date" archives to /2006/11 instead of /date/2006/11 and may help if you run a news site, for example, and are particular about when you posted an entry.
Con: Lengthens the URL of your actual post to /archives/article-title instead of /article-title
Style #3. Place your post title in a category folder (/%category%/%postname%/)
Pro: Clearly shows the category or sub-category that your post falls under, which advocates of Charles Heflin's The Backlink Report - The Plan may find appealing.
Con: There's a potential for duplicate entries, because /category/%category%/ will look just like /%category% (assuming you set the permalinks to show the word /category under the Optional categories section). I wonder though if the category-N.php template can be modified to avoid this, or one would simply not show links to /category/%category%/ at all.
Style #4. Place your post under several "date" folders (/%year%/%month%/%day%/%postname%)
Pro: Quickly organizes your posts according to date, and may be helpful for historical purposes.
Con: Lengthens the URL somewhat, and posts which are subsequently updated may get glossed over because of the date when it was originally created. For example, a post written in 2001 but updated in 2006 might be ignored by searchers who see the "2001" in the URL.
Style #5: Abandon any set permalink structure. Delete the WordPress section of your .htaccess file.
Pro: Your site's performance will improve because you'll depend less on the .htaccess file.
Con: This may affect the clickability of your pages as they appear in the search engine results pages.
Here in ManuelViloria.com, I'm going with Style #2. I'm trying the others permalink styles with other web sites, and so far the search engines are indexing all of them.
Bottomline: Just keep on posting useful content. Find an organized and hierarchical permalink structure that you're happy to work with, and then stick with it.
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Manuel Viloria is your friendly multimedia internet publishing coach who helps you gain more traffic for your web sites. Whether it's through blogging, podcasting, article marketing, videoblogging, email listbuilding, or even through Web 2.0 or social network marketing, you can increase your website visitors today. For more information, please visit Get More Traffic | ManuelViloria.com
"SEO Friendly URLs: Just A Myth?"
First Posted: December 3, 2006 | Filed in: SEO Wordpress
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