When setting up your blog one of the most important tasks that you need to do is to set up SEO friendly permalinks.
What is a permalink?
A permalink is simly the URL structure of your website. Each time you create a new blog post this URL structure creates a unique web address for the post. If you optimize these permalinks properly your blog posts have a much better chance of being ranked highly in Google and the other major search engines.
And once you set them up, you never have to worry about them again.
When you install WordPress the permalinks are already set up in a certain way, and the image below shows you the options that WordPress gives you including its default option.
First off I will show you how you should set up these SEO friendly permalinks, and then I will show you why.
To find your permalink settings simply go to your dashboard and select "Settings", and then under this heading click on "Permalinks", and you should see a screen similar to the image above.
You want to select the "Custom Structure" option and paste in the box next to it the following code (copy and paste is easiest):
/%category%/%postname%/
Obviously you will also need to click on "Save Changes" to save the changes.
So now each time that you create a new blog post, the URL structure will display your domain name, followed by the category of the post, and then followed by the title of your post.
Now you need to set up your category up so that it is exactly the same as your domain (if your domain name is your primary keyword for your site)
If you do not already have your primary keyword phrase set up as one of your categories, you will need to do this now. Once the category is added you select this category for your blog post.
If you click on "Save Draft" you should notice your category permalink (the part straight after http://yourdomain.com/) is displayed just like the image below.
Now you need to set your keyword phrase for the post in the section at the end of the permalink.
When you create a new blog post at the top of the screen you have the opportunity to edit the post name part of the permalink, as the image below shows. (click on it to make the image bigger)
You can see in the image above that you can easily edit the post title section of your permalink. By default this is exactly the same as the title of the blog post, and when I first got started I didn't bother to change it.
But what you should be putting in here is your primary keyword phrase that you are targeting for this blog post, which in the example above is "seo friendly permalinks".
You don't want the entire title of the blog post in here, because the search engines will rank you higher if you use less words, and keep it as only the keyword phrase that you are targeting for this blog post.
So without trying to confuse you too much the result of this is that the search engines will rank you higher for the primary keyword of your blog, and also the keyword phrase that are you are targeting for your blog post.
Hence, that is why the URL of this blog post is http://lowcostmarketingstrategies.com/low-cost-marketing-strategies/seo-friendly-permalinks/
The primary keyword of my site is low cost marketing strategies, and the keyword that I am targeting for this post is "seo friendly permalinks".
Most pro bloggers just use the domain name with the keyword phrase of the blog post as their permalink structure, but it is a fact that if you have the domain name inside the URL twice (as the category as well) it is going to be more SEO friendly.
This is another reason why your domain name should be chosen carefully, and based solely on the primary keyword for the site.
One last example of this would be a person who has a site called http://dogtraining.com and has written a post also targeting the keyword dog training.
Using the formula I have described above their permalinks would look like this:
http://dogtraining.com/dog-training/dog-training
If I have confused you then feel free to ask questions below in the comments section.
To make sure that your content attracts as many readers as possible, it is very important to set up your website so that it has SEO friendly permalinks.
