Setting Your Permalinks

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Setting the correct permalink structure for your new website’s pages is one of the most important things you can do for your site’s usability and search engine optimization.

So, what exactly is a permalink?

A permalink is the structure for the URLs of your site’s pages, and it’s one of the most important things you can optimize on your website’s pages in terms of getting found in the search engines AND the usability of your site for your visitors.

The permalinks for your new website are automatically set to a default structure, which contains irrelevant symbols and numbers, and pretty much do nothing good for your website. Luckily, this is a super simple fix!

Under Settings > Permalinks you will find a list of permalink structures to choose from. I have found that the very best permalink structure to select is the “Post Name” structure, which looks like this:

http://yourURLhere.com/sample-post/

This structure is not only nice and simple, but it will also contain keywords from the title of your post, which will give the post more strength in the search engines.

Caution! Once you’ve set your permalink structure, don’t go back and change it later on down the road! Your permalink structure is what creates the URL for each future page and post on your site. If you link to a page on your site from anywhere else on the web, such as Facebook, Pinterest, or anywhere, and then you change your permalink structure, all of those links will be broken. Disaster!

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