I regularly visit hundreds of websites a day. Some of them are for entertainment and some are for information. When I visit them I see different URL structures and some that are similar too. I wonder why they are not similar and if they are perfect for SEO friendly URL structure. Because when it comes to important SEO aspects of any website, the permalink plays a vital role in overall optimization.

So, I did some research and found the perfect ULR structure that is fully SEO friendly. The research was completely based on WordPress sites and here I will talk about SEO friendly URL structure in WordPress.

A URL is a permalink link to your page and your posts and does not change over time. Therefore, choosing the perfect and suitable permalinks for SEO is one of the important parts when talking about SEO.

WordPress has a standard URL structure and is not SEO friendly. WordPress automatically sets the default permalinks after installation. Standard permalinks come with the page or post id at the end of the URL.

The number used in the standard permalink tells WordPress where the content can be found in its database. The following example is the standard / simple URL structure for WordPress,

www.funnywill.com/?p=10467

The above sample URL is not SEO friendly, so we need to change this default URL to a recommended SEO friendly URL.

Users can change the permalink structure in the WordPress dashboard settings at any time. But this is not the recommended practice. This can cause search engine traffic and referral traffic to drop considerably as visitors are presented with 404 page errors instead of the page they want to view.

Changing the permalink will move your website content to the new indexed address and the referral will come in the same link and find nothing. It has a very negative impact on SEO and the thoughts of your website visitors.

What is an SEO friendly URL in WordPress?

The URL is one of the main factors in attracting users to your website. A unique and well-organized style of permalinks is sure to attract your visitors, making it easier for visitors and search engines to navigate and view your content. URLs must be in a readable format. It also improves your website’s ranking in search engines.

Example of SEO friendly URL Structure

https://www.funnywill.com/seo-friendly-url-wordpress/

Example of Non-SEO friendly URL Structure

https://www.funnywill.com/?p=123

Now, you want your site’s permalinks to be SEO friendly, right?

How To Make an SEO Friendly URL in a WordPress Site?

Making your website’s SEO URL friendly is easy. WordPress offers great settings to change your URL structure to SEO friendly. So what we call WordPress is totally dedicated to SEO. Come on, check out the steps below to change the URL structure.

• Go to the admin menu (control panel)
• Go to the Settings and Permalinks section
• Select the URL structure of the post name
• Click Save Changes to save this structure.

WordPress has 6 different types of permalink structures and the post name is the best-recommended URL structure for permalinks.

Types of Permalink Links

Standard: Standard permalinks look like www.funnywill.com/?p=123, where 123 is the ID of the post or page in the database.

Day and Name: Permalinks are visible based on the day and name of the post. It looks like www.funnywill.com/2018/01/31/sample-post/

Month and name: it seems the same as the day and the name, but the day is missing here. The permalink link will appear according to the year, the months, and the name. The sample link looks like this,

www.funnywill.com/2018/01/sample-post/

Numeric: Numeric permalinks will be defined based on post and page IDs. The sample link for numeric permalinks is similar to

www.funnywill.com/archives/123

Post Name: This is one of the most popular permalink setups and this is the best SEO permalink in WordPress and is a highly recommended permalink setup.

It is very popular because it generates short, memorable, and human-readable links to the post and the page. This type of permalink link is based on the slug.

Even if you have the same post name, your URL will automatically change to unique. You can further customize the URL in the single page/post settings. You cannot place the same slug on two posts.

The permalink sample link is www.funnywill.com/sample-post, you can customize the slug for individual posts and pages easily with the help of the option under the page title section or post editor.

Custom structure: This type of permalinks helps you to set your own desired permalink. Example is /archives/%year%/%monthnum%/%day%/%postname%/. You can choose the date, the post name, or any other parameter for this structure. If any of the permalinks above are not suitable for your needs, you can use the custom structure for it.

We hope this tutorial has helped you to make SEO friendly permalinks in WordPress website.