WordPress Permalink Settings

Having wordpress permalink settings on a blog or website designed with WordPress will take you higher in Gogle. User-friendly internal links create a more understandable environment for users who visit your site.

A url structure that will be useful to the user will of course also be useful to search engines. This means extra Seo points for blog publishers and site owners. A url structure that is useful to the user will of course be useful to search engines. This means extra Seo points for blog publishers and site owners.

When you are creating a new blog or building a site, permalink settings are vital. Any changes you make to the URL structure at a later date will cause you to lose rankings in Google searches.

Whether it is during the initial setup or during a radical change, I recommend that you read this article to the end as it contains life-saving information in both cases.

Permalink Settings in WordPress First Installation

You have installed the WordPress platform on your site and log in to the WordPress administration panel to set Permalink, that is, User Friendly Link settings.

Click on the Permalinks link in the Settings Menu. A screen similar to the one below will open.

There are different url suffixes in the table titled General Settings. You can choose any of them or create your own custom url structure by selecting the last option. If you do not make any changes, by default the plain form(https://www.omersahin.com.tr/?p=123) will be selected.

Permalink Formats

Let’s examine all structures in turn and Google pays close attention to the URL structure when indexing pages. In our article, we will look for the answer to the question of which type of URL structure Google adopts more and what arrangements need to be made in the User Link Settings menu for this.

1. Simple Format(domain/?p=123)

Each article you create with WordPress is given an article id number by the platform. It uses this id number when saving to the database and when it will call the article back again. If the Permalink Settings are not made manually, this setting is defined by default and users access the articles by typing url in this format.

This is also how search engines index. Google aims to give users information about the article in the easiest way possible, so it doesn’t like straight links.

2. Day and Name Format (domain /2018/04/29/sample-writing/)

With this type of URL, the date on which the post or page was created or updated is presented to the user in the URL line. Google does not need date information. For Google, the date of indexing is important. It determines this date itself, so you do not need to specify the date in the permalink settings.

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Also, if you don’t frequently add updated articles and pages to your site, Google may not mark your site as up-to-date. Therefore, the date option may lower your Seo score. Since there is such a risk, we do not recommend using the Url type in the Day and Name type.

3. Month and Name Format (domain /2018/04/example-writing/)

This type of user-friendly link is similar to the Day and Name type. Articles written in that month are separated from the others in the URL. Unfortunately, Google does not look favorably on this type of url.

4. Digital Archive Format (domain/archives/123)

This type of permalinks is common on WordPress pages with different types of scientific articles. Google values user links of the Numeric type. If there are a large number of articles for the digital archive, this is a good way to separate them from each other.

5. Post Name Format (domain/example-yazi/)

I don’t know about other search engines, but Google’s favorite URL link type is the Article name type. Thanks to this link, the user has general information about the article they will read in the shortest way.

Google’s goal is to provide visitors with concise, up-to-date and satisfying information without confusion or obfuscation. To support this policy, Google expects publishers and site owners to show the same dedication.

When you publish your articles in the Url structure of the“Article Name” type, Google will index your page more easily and search visitors will be able to see your site at the top when they want to see the most appropriate result for the parameter they are looking for. Thus, the Google Seo score of your site will increase and the number of visitors will increase day by day.

If Installation is Pre-Done

If you have installed WordPress from the very beginning, you have made these settings without any problems. However, when the Permalink Settings are changed on an installed WordPress, all search engines, especially Google, will be affected. Because the link URLs that Google has previously indexed will have changed. This means

Previously in-site links;
domain/2018/04/29/example-yazi/

Now;
domain/ornek-yazi/.

In other words, when you search on Google or any other search engine, the search engine will call the page with the last URL it crawled. For this reason, your visitors who come to your page with the redirection of search engines will encounter 404 (Page Not Found) error.

The return to you will be plenty of visitors, seo and ranking loss. To avoid this problem, you will need to do a 301 redirect in the .htaccess file.

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The .htaccess file is a file on the Apache web server that contains web server and user-based definitions. You can connect using your site’s Ftp interface or you can make changes in .htaccess with 3rd party software. I made changes to .htaccess using the Tools menu of the Yoast Seo plugin.

In short, you need to add the following line at the top or bottom in .htaccess. Save and exit by adapting the URL part according to your own site. This line will provide the necessary URL redirection. Google will automatically redirect the visitor to the new URL address of the same article, even if the visitor comes via the old link.