The WordPress CMS is one of the most powerful and easy to use website building systems but one thing WordPress does is default it’s "Permalinks" to a crazy format called Default!

OK, it’s called Default, but the default that is used does your site little to no good for SEO and many simply do not change it.

When you write a post or a page, the title you use becomes the URL. This same URL get’s crawled by search engines. Having proper keywords in your URL is vital for SEO but why WordPress uses the ?P=<postid> for the default URL, I have no clue.

If you do not change the default setting in your WordPress backend, your URL’s will look like this:

http://www.YourDomainName.com/?p=123

The p=x is basically the Number of posts you have done and is the next post number. So, the only good for SEO that your title is doing, are the keywords in your domain name! This means you are leaving A Lot on the table as your title is very important for SEO.

So how do you change the way the Permalinks are displayed?

Once logged into your WordPress backend, go to Settings/Permalinks. You will see 5 options to choose from. Out of the 5, I think you should be using one of the following 3:

• Day and Name
• Month and Name
• Custom Structure

Simply select the radio button to the left of which one of those 3 you would like to use and be sure to click Save Changes at the bottom of the page. Picking the Custom Structure option will likely be your best choice.

If you select Custom Structure, I would use the string /%postname%/ which will then include your domain name followed by the title you use for your post / page. Writing a title with important keywords will GREATLY help your article instead of having the standard p=xx

/%category%/%postname% is another custom structure option and will display the category name before your title in the URL as well.

Using the Day and Name will include the Full Date and your title.

Using the Month and Name will include the Month/Year and title.

3 of the easiest and best things for SEO are your Title, Meta and URL. By simply changing your Permalinks default will help you with 2 of those 3 important parts!

Now if you already have posts or pages live, you will have to use caution if you change your permalinks setting as your URL’s will change!

Be sure to use the URL Redirection plugin if this is the case. If your starting a new site(s), please get into the habbit of changing the Permalink structure from the start, as it will greatly help your site for SEO.

The URL Redirection plugin also has a nice 404 error tracking feature on it to help you know what pages may be coming up dead. Check out the link above for a lot more info on the plugin and its features.