Helping You Rock Out Your Site Like A Rockstar!

I wrote Mastering Pretty Permalinks in WordPress with the intention to introduce the concept of the best permalink structure for WordPress powered websites. This was a call to try to encourage people to organize their website, but beware of how the permalink structure might be overrode if you have a file folder name the same as a post and you are using the post name permalink structure.

It is obvious that I am going to say that the post name (formerly known as pretty permalink) structure or the /%postname%/ option in your WordPress Permalink General settings is the best structure.

However, I am going to go a step further. Search Engine Optimization is fun to play with in regards to your domain’s URL structure. It can be a way to optimize what your article is, other than just organization.

What we know in basic WordPress use for structure purposes are as the following:

Permalink Structure for Posts

We can control how our permalink structure can look whether by post ID, month and date and more. We can even designate tags and categories to these posts and call them to pages using custom WordPress queries. For example you can call a category and show only tags and a certain number of many posts.

The reason why the post name structure (/%postname%/) works best for a post is because it shows the post title closest to the domain, showing how important it is to the site. The structure within the web page itself will also emphasize this using heading tags (h1, h2, h3, h4, and so on.) Now, if you listed by category (and I have seen people recommend that), depending on how your category is labeled, you are telling the search engine that the category is far more important to crawl than the actual title of the post.

WordPress naturally has the base “category” as a name and you can group posts under those categories. It is okay to display your posts on your site in a category. Most people believe including categories makes your posts duplicate content. NO! It is only if you are posting the same thing again on your site or the same exact thing on another site (like if you do guest blogging.) The search engines are not dumb.

Now, here is the fun part as well as the tricky part. What if you do use the category structure? How can you make it clever enough to draw more attention to your title. WPCandy actually exercises this clever way by naming the category’s slug an action. Yes, just the slug as you can designate a different name pointing to a different slug.

Just some examples:

News is reports
Opinion is thinks
Tutorials is teaches

Pretty cool, huh? As a note, the posts do group under the general “category/category-name”.

In this, we are telling (using the WPCandy example) that WPCandy.com reports such and such title, giving it an actual sentence. And you know, it nearly makes this former English major cry happy tears. (Oh I am such a geek!)

Permalink Structure for Pages

Pages are kind of fun and since WordPress 3.0′s menu addition, your control over pages has increased with several options. You can use the older hierarchy structure with parent and child pages. Remember, pages in WordPress are normally known for being used for static content.

The older hierarchy structure adds the slug of the parent page into the URL structure. SO, if you have like a parent page and then three deep into children and grandchildren, your URL structure might get a bit long. That might not be a good idea for search engine optimizing as it takes away the importance of that page.

However, the hierarchy structure is not the only way. You can use the WordPress menu option in your WordPress administration (Under Appearance>Menus) to organize your website and keep your URL structure for your pages simple. You can publish a page without using the hierarchy and use the WordPress 3.0 menu to organize your website without adding more length to your page’s URL structure.

Now, both methods can be used and Google will pick up and group areas of your site that have been optimized as a group. For example, if you have defined that your main sections of your website are your ‘About’, ‘Contact’, and maybe… as an example say ‘Resources’, like I have here in Blondish.net, Google will pick up that structure if you do have a set up pages that are relevant to that main area.

As a note, We can also apply these techniques to custom posts types since WordPress 3.0.

In Summary

Your permalink structure is both a way to organize and help search engines, but can also be great in helping your visitors navigate your website. The best permalink structure to use in WordPress is one that is the most coherent for search engines to deliver the best results to potential visitors. Play around with your site and see what is best for you.

Episode 2 of the Blondish.net Podcast is a little beginner coverage on blogging and SEO. I wanted to cover basics on SEO for the content and design. I do recommend in this post the plugin WordPress SEO by Yoast.

I go over some advice for writing the title and the content of a post as well as a few tips for designers. As a reminder, this is a basic SEO. I will cover some advance SEO in future podcasts.

The episode is a little over 15 minutes.

Blogging and SEO

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 17:52 — 10.2MB)

What is pretty permalinks? Well for a brief explanation that is not difficult, it is changing the settings in your WordPress URL structure from yoursite.com/?p=2 , title ‘About’ to yoursite.com/about/ ( /%postname%/ ). To use this ‘pretty’ permalink structure and incorporate both pages and posts, you need to remember your hierarchy structure of your site.

For example, if you used (as a generic example) Webmistress, Domain, Contact, Sitemap as your the parent pages, you cannot name a blog post after these as it would interfere. Yes, each post and page is naturally numbered when it is created, but in the pretty permalinks structure, it could interfere with each other. You would be trying to call two pages at once. While I created yoursite.com/?p=2 that was titled ‘About’ and then later on in yoursite.com/?p=48 also blogged in a post with the title ‘About’, the structure would both be yoursite.com/about/

So for short:

Parent Pages MUST be differently titled from your blog posts.

I hope not to boggle anyone, but I am not completely done with this especially if you self host your WordPress blog.

So, now with the scenario of your pages now having the ‘pretty permalinks’, you decided to store images and information into your public html folder (in cPanel, or for Plesk users- your httpdocs folder), and you made a subfolder named ‘about’. The same rules come into play. You cannot make a subfolder OR even a subdomain that is named like your parent pages.

So, as I said, when you are using pretty permalinks, you need to recall the names of your pages hierarchy. Some like this style. I have come to like it for the past year. Some argue that it bloats that database. Others says pretty permalinks are great for search engine optimization. However, I think of it as a personal choice. I kind of like the ability to see the title of my post or page in the URL.

What do you use for your site structure while using WordPress (for those who do use it)? Have you had issues with the pretty permalinks technique? I am including a few articles to help you read more on the issue as I might talk more about pretty permalinks as another topic in the future.

Related/ Recommended Links:

• Efficient permalink strategies for WordPress
• Using Permalinks – WordPress Codex
• Pretty Permalinks and Pagerank by David Bradley
• Pretty Permalinks Can Help You in the Search Engines by Kevin D. Hendricks

I met Shannon Steffen at WordCamp Chicago 2010, and I was just impressed by her. She presented right before me about WordPress SEO and I was so happy to hear that my SEO beliefs were not off the wall. Also, it helped because she was my seat buddy too so I probably talked her ear off. (lol)

For anyone who has met her, she is really friendly and if you have questions, she does have answers. With her longtime background in SEO and working with online and well known companies, I thought it would be great to send her some questions and maybe share with you a little about her. And because of her background, I am sure her input will help anyone reading.

About Shannon Steffen, MBA/TM – Human SEO and Social Search Strategist:

As CEO and chief SEO business strategist at Excira Media, Shannon has been responsible for creating cutting-edge, affordable solutions for small to mid-sized companies, including technical ecommerce solutions, search engine optimization (SEO) services and social media brand management. Shannon’s technical experience spans more than 15 years in Information Technology, content management systems, and multiple years of experience with Monster.com and Cafepress.com. Shannon Steffen has presented at conferences internationally, owns a number of successful e-commerce websites and is currently writing her first book on “Human SEO”.

Shannon is a native New Yorker currently living in Milwaukee, Wisconsin with her husband and two Chocolate Labrador Retrievers that she refers to as her “fur babies”. You can find her at her company site, ExciraMedia.com, or her own site, ShanSteffen.com.

Interview With Shannon Steffen

NILE: Should all bloggers optimize their websites for search engines? Or perhaps, is it necessary to?

SHANNON: Bloggers should always optimize their websites for the three major search engines: Google, Yahoo! and Bing, however, they should not alienate their readers in order to increase their search engines rankings (SER). Successful bloggers will write their content first and then read over the content to see what can be optimized. The search engines want to know the who, what, when, where and how of your blog post but only after you’ve first answered these questions for your readers.

NILE: In your opinion, what are some of the most common mistakes webmasters make with SEO?

SHANNON: Wow! This question made me stop and think for a while because there are so many common (and stupid/simple) mistakes webmasters and bloggers make when it comes to SEO. If I had to pick one, I would have to say it is when they over-optimize the website and alienate the humans visiting the website. First, search engine spiders can figure out that there is no real content but rather just search engine tactics. Second, what’s the point of getting people to your website, through the search engines, if you are going to lose them once they get there?

NILE: Have you done optimizing for videos? If so, what kind of advice do you have for both vloggers or any blogger than also creates their own videos? How can their blog help optimize videos?

SHANNON: Optimizing for videos is a great challenge and a lot of fun for me. Unlike website optimizing, performing SEO for videos is multilevel – the video itself and the content around the video. If possible, vloggers should always have their videos on their own website and optimize on the main domain. By doing so, the vlogger or blogger maintains full ownership of the video and how it is used. This also gives the owner the availability to control the keyword rich content, URL, title and so forth of the video on their website. Other tips would include choosing a keyword dense (but human) title and description, transcribe the video in the blog (search engines love this), and include your videos in your XML Sitemap feeds.

NILE: I often have clients who ask me what they should write about to rank SEO wise, especially for businesses that are new to the concept blogging. I normally tell them anything that is informative and worth mentioning in their niche. What other advice do you have for people that ask the same?

SHANNON: Let your passion flow! So many people jump on topic bandwagons because other people are making money or gaining in popularity through them. If you don’t like politics, don’t write a political blog. Readers and customers are smart and know when the website or blog owner doesn’t have a passion for that niche market. The key is that whatever you write, it should connect with others on a deeper level. Blogs are not white-papers and once you write content to engage, persuade and captivate your audience, success is guaranteed! Always answer the questions: “How is this going to help someone else?” and “What’s in it for the reader?” when writing content.

NILE: While WordPress is SEO ready out of the box, what 3 things do you recommend for users to do first in optimizing when they open a new website?

SHANNON: First, having a tool that is SEO ready out of the box does not mean your website or blog is going to be optimized out of the box. SEO is an art and a science that comes from many years of experience and great expertise. I love bread, have a bread pan but that doesn’t mean I can bake a loaf of bread that will have people knocking down my door. If you truly want success, hire an ethical, natural and white-hat SEO consultant. Second, you need to think like a human. Keywords are great but when you are optimizing your website, you need to take a moment to think how a human being would search for your content. If you were sitting in front of Google’s homepage and looking for your content, what would you type in the search field? Figure that out and then use that term in your URL, title or content. Third, lay out your website on a piece of paper before creating it online. You should know the navigation and structure of your website before you implement as it’s difficult to make changes later. Once the search engines start to index your website, it is almost impossible to make any navigation, link structure or coding changes without negatively effecting your search engine rankings.