The Best WordPress Permalink Structure: Which One?

Few days back we discussed WordPress permalink on our HBB FB Group and I was really amazed by some answers, I just thought of sharing my views here as a blog post to the most debated question – “Which is the best WordPress permalink structure?“. Do I know the answer? Well, let’s find out.

Note: Before going further I would like to tell, if you are already running a quality/authority blog with good content, then it’s okay to proceed with the current permalink itself, changing your WordPress permalink will be very hectic, lots of redirections and stuff, so take action accordingly.

Best WordPress Permalink Structure

To see these options, you can migrate to ‘Settings’ > ‘Permalinks’.

1. Plain: /?p=123

Here ‘123’ is the post ID. This is the default WordPress permalink. This is the one your blog gets when you first install WordPress on it. And do you know what WordPress calls this permalink as? ‘Ugly’.

When Should I Use It? NEVER.

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2. Day and Name: /2016/01/28/sample-post/

Okay so, this permalink is a bit detailed showing the year, month and day. If you are running a ‘newspaper’ sort of blog, then this is something that manages to tell when this particular news was ‘published’. The ‘sample-post’ slug is something like the keywords relating to your article/post, or the post name.

When Should I Use It? I wouldn’t really recommend this as well mate, unless you are too keen.

Demo link? I would say ‘Mashable’.

http://mashable.com/2016/01/28/fb-live-video/

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3. Month and Name: /2016/01/sample-post/

Now here, we ditched the ‘day’ tag and going with ‘month and ‘name’. This also looks pretty organized I would say, this is the default permalink for Google‘s Blogger.com (.blogspot) platform as well. I have seen plenty of blogs going for this format, especially tech blogs and other ‘news’ blogs.

When Should I Use It? Feel free to go ahead with this if you are planning to launch a tech blog or any ‘news’ type of blog. I somehow feel this looks professional as well.

Demo link? I would say ‘YourStory’.

http://yourstory.com/2016/01/startups-digital-marketing/

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4. Numeric: /archvies/123

I have rarely (or never?) seen any blogs having this kind of permalink setting for their blog posts. ‘Post ID’ is okay but for both SEO and Non-SEO purpose, it’s always good to keep the ‘post-name’ in the post permalink. It’s the easiest way to convey people and Google that this article is about this particular ‘topic’.

When Should I Use It? NEVER.

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5. Post Name: /sample-post/

So finally, we are here with the most debated WordPress permalink structure. The only reason I would skip this is because I always feel there should be a fundamental difference between a ‘post permalink’ and a ‘page permalink’, but alas. Apart from that, I also believe that this is an SEO-Friendly permalink structure.

When Should I Use It? When you are running a ‘Tips & Tricks’ blog. Or maybe something like, an evergreen content blog. But for a ‘News’ blog? I’m not sure.

Demo link? I would say ‘Backlinko’.

http://backlinko.com/search-engine-ranking

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6. Custom Struture

Here we can experiment with all the permalink structure tags; you can keep ‘post name’, ‘category’, ‘tag’, ‘year’, ‘month’, etc. I have seen most of the popular blogs using the ‘category’ tag in between the domain name and post name. It’s also good when you want to keep your permalink organized and at the same time, you shouldn’t be changing your categories often, which will surely mess up the whole structure.

Demo link? I would say ‘Business.com’.

http://www.business.com/seo-marketing/how-to-master-local-seo-in-2016/

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Permalinks Used By Other Popular Blogs

You can be as creative and as comfortable as you like when it comes to permalinks, I’m sure Google focuses majorly on the content to rank the blogs and not the ‘permalink structure’, so feel free to pick the right one. These are some of the interesting permalinks picked by other popular blogs.

ShoutMeLoud: http://www.shoutmeloud.com/generate-wordpress-sitemap-jetpack.html

Gizmo Times: http://www.gizmotimes.com/news/google-amp-project-speed-up-mobile-web/4258

The Verge: http://www.theverge.com/2014/4/9/5598892/wordpress-owner-automattic-buys-longreads

As you can see, all these blogs are popular regardless how different their permalinks are, so focus on the content and forget the rest.

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Okay, So Which Permalink HBB Is Using?

Thank God* someone asked this question. I’m a complicated blogger, and I have like changed the permalinks 5 or 6 links during our Blogging Journey. And I regret that. As they say, Mind is a Monkey, I just got uncomfortable with each and every Permalink I picked, but at the end, I realised there is no secret ingredient for this.

This is our permalink structure:

https://hellboundbloggers.com/2016/01/increase-website-traffic-with-whatsapp-simple-tips-63367/

HBB is a community for Social Media, SEO, Blogging, Internet Marketing, Startups and much more. At first, I wanted to have HBB as a ‘News’ kind of blog and I opted for the ‘Post ID’ tag (which was pretty important for Google News), but later Google didn’t bother much about this. Still, we are happy with the way the permalinks look, the more we focus on quality content, the more we can reach the masses, that’s it.

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Permalinks For Categories & Tags?!

See, by default the WordPress category URL will be like /category/ and the WordPress tag URL will be like /tag/, but we can tweak that part and make it according to what you like. If you are running a Food recipes blog, then you can replace the category or the tag with the keyword ‘recipes’, which kind of makes more sense. This is our Category and Tag permalink:

For Category: https://hellboundbloggers.com/topics/wordpress/

For Tag: https://hellboundbloggers.com/info/internet-marketing/

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Last But Not Least, Keeping ‘Year’ in Permalink?!

This is another debated question concerning WordPress permalinks, to keep the ‘Year’ or not. If you see, on HBB we published quality and detailed articles on 2009, 2010, etc., like few years back itself, and we try our best to keep them updated with latest tips/tricks. But the permalink will still have ‘2009’ on it, so some people (very less) think that, oh, it’s like an article published on 2009, so the tips are outdated, let’s move on to other posts. This is something which bothers Bloggers these days, but to be honest, this is no longer a big issue.

For Google SERP results, we can keep it by adding ‘Last Updated’ feature on our blog posts, so that it shows the time when the blog post was ‘last updated’ and not ‘first published’, which actually makes a huge difference.

Hope you understand what’s behind the best WordPress permalink structure game. So, which permalink structure you are using for your WordPress blog? Do share the format on the comments below, it should be interesting to see how people decide for their blogs.