Are Your Permalinks Letting You Down?

posted in Wordpress How To

I was setting up a site today that had a load of categories in it and it made me realise something ….that perhaps I haven’t shared in interviews or my books before (I honestly can’t remember!)

My preferred way of setting up permalinks on my blogs are /%category%/%postname%/ .   There are a few reasons  that I like this structure.   First of all, it makes it easier for the visitor to navigate your site if you have a large site with a lot of content on it.   Secondly, the category names on my niche blogs are keywords and the post names are related keywords.  Finally, plugins like Platinum SEO allow you to link your categories pages and tags pages together to create an seo love fest.

So enough of why I like categories/post name structure for my permalinks ….back to the blog that I was setting up.   If you leave your permalinks in that structure then your permalink will look like this:

http://yourdomain/category/category-name/post-name

Now for a real life example this is what it would look like:

http://www.wordpress.com/category/plugins/featured-plugins

Notice something?

Yes the pesky default "category" basename appends itself before the actual category name.    Super boring and no seo love there!

Although there is a plugin to remove this, it’s really quite simple – no plugin required.   In fact, you are not going to believe how simple it is.  Here’s a screenshot of the change made to remove the default category appendage

Yes, it really is that simple … a full stop and click "save changes".

I’m using WP 2.8.3 by the way, if you have an earlier version then this might do the trick for you "/." instead of "."
 

Now back to settng up my niche blog :)
 

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