One of your goals as a blogger is to attract and retain readership. In order to do that you want optimize your page and post descriptions so Google can quickly identify and classify essential information about your site, the subject and content of those posts and pages. One method for ‘assisting' Google is to create descriptive WordPress permalinks.
A permalink is nothing more than the complete web address to an individual page or post in WordPress. For example, the permalink for this post is: https://bulletproofblogger.com/configuring-wordpress-permalinks. Unfortunately, by default, WordPress doesn't automatically use that nice description. A default WordPress permalink will look something like this: https://bulletproofblogger.com/?p=123. Not very informative. It provides Google with no useful information. It makes it very difficult for people to discover your content.
Fortunately, WordPress makes it easy to change and edit your Permalinks. First, head to your WordPress Dashboard and select the Settings tab as shown below, then click on Permalinks.
If your setting up a blog where you'll be the primary author and editor, select ‘Post name' as your permalink setting. This will provide Google with a more descriptive link for your content. This makes it easier for people to discover your great content.
In another post in this series I'll show you how to customize the exact wording for all of your page and post permalinks.
Read more articles in the How to Build Your Bulletproof Blog series:
- How to Build Your Blog – Introduction
- How to Select and Buy Your Domain Name
- How to Buy Web Hosting for Your New Blog
- How to Point Your Hover Domain to Your Bluehost Account
- How to Install WordPress
- How to Set Up WordPress User Names
- Configuring WordPress Permalinks
- Configuring WordPress General Settings
- How to Choose a WordPress Theme
- How to Install a WordPress Theme
- How to Install WordPress Plugins
- WordPress Security and Backup
- How to Publish Your First WordPress Post
- How to Create Your First WordPress Page