Choosing a suitable WordPress permalink structure for your blog or website is very important, i think it is the very first thing to do before even making your first blog post.
The choice of a suitable WordPress permalink structure varies with individuals.
This blog post is aim at guiding you in choosing the best option for your blog/website by explaining the pros and cons of all the permalink structure.
- Default http://yoursite.com/?p=123
This is the default WordPress permalink structure.Most people still retain this because it short and comprehensive. Ideally, This is not a good choice for a blog with little number of post, because it display the total amount of post in your blog.
The major demerit of this permalink is – it a dynamic URL which has been depreciated, instead permalink that contain rich keywords in it URL(pretty url) is used this days because they are more SEO friendly (still debated), friendly also to the end users, they give an insight on what to expect from the page, recommended by Google and other search engines.
- Date and post name/ID http://yoursite.com/2013/1/25
This may come in different from, the permalink might just be the year of post and the post name(http://site.com/2012/post-name) or the year, month and day of the post included in the permalink url. Some even include minute and seconds in it.Having date included in permalink is kind of ancient, It is not a recommended practise if you will want to keep your blog post evergreen.
It is suitable and recommended to News website though.
Aside the fact that it make your blog URLs unnecessarily long, when an old post is being viewed, it diminish Click through rate(ctr) on search result page(SERP) i.e users are unlikely to click on old post even if it the solution they’re looking for.
The WordPress permalink structure for this is /%year%/%monthnum%/%day%/%postname%/. The full date tag are listed below:-
%year% The year of the post, four digits, for example 2004 %monthnum% Month of the year, for example 05 %day% Day of the month, for example 28 %hour% Hour of the day, for example 15 %minute% Minute of the hour, for example 43 %second% Second of the minute, for 33 Please note that a post-name or post ID must be combined with the date tag.
- Post ID and post name http://yoursite.com/123/post-name
This is another good WordPress permalink option. it combines the post ID and post name in the URL structure. The demerit about this is, when the number of your blog post exceed six(6) digits, it make your URL longer.Also, if you have fewer post on your blog, the number of post will easily be noticed by visitors which is not that appealing.
The permalink tag for this stucture is “/%post_id%/%postname%/“.
- Caregory name and Post name http://yoursite.com/category/post-name
To most webmaster this is the best option when choosing a permalink structure. It gives your site a Hierarchy, but the reason most people don’t use it is, instead of search engine indexing the Hierarchy structure in the URL, they turn their attention to the breadcrumb in the site: making this option inconsiderable.
If you know you haven’t settle for permanent categories name, don’t use this option because the moment you change a category name, you start having 404 errors, though this can be eliminated using a 301 permanent redirect code.
The permalink tag for this structure is “/%category%/%postname%/“.
When you assign multiple categories to a post, only one can show up in the permalink. This will be the lowest numbered category.
- Post name only http://yoursite.com/post-name
For me this is the recommended WordPress permalink structure. it is short and descriptive. Most people didnt use because of the performance issue it has in WordPress, but this has been resolved in v3.3 and higher.
Conclusion
Choosing permalink for your blog/website is completely a personal decision but care should be taken wen choosing one.
If you are to choose a permalink for your blog, consider the Top three widely used permalink which is:
- http://yoursite.com/postname/
- http://yoursite.com/category/postname/
- http://yoursite.com/postID/postname/
If you have any contribution or contrary opinion about choosing the best permalink sructure, please comment below.