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Wordpress Blogging – What is a Permalink?
A permalink is a piece of code that you can add to your blog to create user friendly URLs for your blog posts.
Now, it is not possible to change the URL of a blog post on just any blogging platform. On a Wordpress Blog it is not only possible, it is also extremely easy to do.
The Wordpress.org software platform enables you, the blogger, to have a self-hosted blog.
Wordpress Blogging – Why do I Need A Self-Hosted Blog?
The benefit of having a self-hosted blog is that you have complete control of your blog. You control how your blog looks with your choice of theme and you can choose a domain name (URL) that is search engine optimized.
Another benefit of a self-hosted blog is that you control your content and you own your content because it is on your own server and not on someone else’s server. Your blog can never be shut down without your knowledge or approval.
So back to permalinks, after a short digression to Wordpress.
Wordpress Blog – You Control the Permalink Structure
So when you use a Wordpress.org blog you can change the permalink structure to anything you choose. Within the Wordpress software there are a couple of standard permalink options.
Wordpress Blog – Default Options for Permalinks
The default option for permalinks in the wordpress admin part of your blog looks like this:
“http://bloggingtimesavers.com/?p=123”
As you can see this doesn’t produce an attractive or useful URL for your blog post. It is hard to tell this URL to anyone else (how would you remember it?) It also is not search engine optimized which means that unless someone was already reading your blog they would never find the post using Google or any of the other search engines.
Other standard options for permalinks found in the Wordpress admin area are:
“http://bloggingtimesavers.com/2009/03/03/sample-post/”,
which features the date of the post but is also not search engine optimized (SEO)
or:
“ http://bloggingtimesavers.com/2009/03/sample-post/”
which features the date of the post in the month/year format.
Blog Tip – Use a Custom Permalink Structure
I suggest that you choose the “custom permalink” option in the Wordpress admin area.
An example of a great custom structure to use is “/%category%/%postname%/”.
Just copy and paste this piece of code into the “custom permalink” field and the result is that your blog posts will be attractive, easy to remember and pass on and most importantly, be optimized for the search engines. This of course depends on your choice of category and postname.
To ensure that your blog posts are easily found you would want to make sure that you use appropriate keywords and keyphrases in your catagories and postnames.
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Tags: Blog Tips, Blogging, wordpress blog
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