How do permalinks affect SEO?

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The permalink structure you choose can impact your website’s search engine optimization (SEO) . WordPress allows you to choose from multiple URL formats , but not all of them are SEO friendly or easy to use. Therefore, understanding how permalinks work in WordPress and their impact on SEO is essential. That’s why we’ll introduce you to permalinks and the options WordPress offers, and then explain how permalinks and SEO go hand in hand.

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What is a permalink?
A permalink is a URL. When we talk about bolivia phone number data in WordPress , we are referring to the URL structure you use on your website. By default, new WordPress sites use a link format similar to the following for pages and posts:

yourwebsite.it/?p=123

This is the “simple” permalink structure. The number at the end of the URL corresponds to a specific post or page ID, but until you click that link, you don't know where it goes.

In addition to that basic structure, WordPress offers many other options for permalinks, especially if you’re using WooCommerce .

WordPress allows you to change your site’s permalink structure at any time. However, we generally recommend choosing a URL format as early in your site’s life as possible and sticking to it. Changing permalinks becomes messier as your website grows and develops a large library of content. That growth means updating dozens or hundreds of URLs and having to wait for search engines to do the same. Additionally, when URLs change, you can lose important backlinks to your site, but the links to them don’t.

As a general rule, the best options for permalink structures are the post name or a custom layout that adds the category to the URL so it looks like this:

yourwebsite.it/categoria/post-name

In the following sections, we will discuss why these are your two best options. For now, let's talk about the connection between URL structure and SEO.

How do permalinks affect SEO?
There is a clear correlation between permalinks and SEO. Google considers your URLs as ranking factors . In short, the search engine uses permalinks to gain insights into your content and position it accordingly in its search engine results pages (SERPs ).

URLs are supposed to provide some information about the content of a page, which you can’t get with a link like yourwebsite.com/?p=123.

If your permalinks aren’t related to your content, Google might not rank them highly in relevant search results. Plus, you might alienate potential readers: if they see confusing links, they’re less likely to click on them and read your articles.

How to Set Up Your Permalinks for SEO in WordPress
Permalinks are completely customizable and WordPress also offers a number of variables so you can set them however you like. Now we will explore some of the different options for your posts and pages.

Setting the URL Slug in a Post or Page
WordPress automatically generates a URL for every page and post you publish. However, you can control the last part of the link, called the “ slug ”.

In the following URL, the slug is post-name :

yourwebsite.it /post-name

When using the WordPress editor, you can update a page’s slug by opening the Post Settings in the Block Editor . The Post Settings tab has a section called Permalinks. Inside, you’ll find a URL Slug field . This contains the slug that WordPress generates from the post or page title.

Setting a Slug in WordPress
When you set a title for a post or page, WordPress uses it to generate a slug. It includes each word in the title, separated by hyphens.

For short titles, you may want to leave the slug as is. However, we generally recommend cutting off some of it to make the URL more concise.

Decide how many words your URL Slug should include
URL slugs should be relatively short and to the point. In most cases, 2-6 words in length gives you enough room to include the article's main keyword and reduce unnecessary parts of the title.

Take the title of this post, for example, which is “How do permalinks affect SEO?” Instead of keeping the entire title as the post slug, we’ve shortened it to: /permalink-seo

Those two words are enough to let you know what you will read if you see the URL in the SERPs. The link also provides information to Google about the topic of the post. Ideally, you will also include the keywords you want to target in the URL slug. If this post were specifically about keywords in permalinks (as in the next section being the entire post), we might choose /permalinks-keywords-seo to better fit what Google and users would expect.