Find out how to easily change the default permalinks setting in wordpress.

1. How to Change the Default
Permalinks Setting in
WordPress

2. Make Sure to Change Your Default
Permalinks Settings in Your WordPress
Blog!

3. When I stated my first WordPress blog I just
wanted to get as much content out as I could
to get traffic. I knew a bit about search
engine optimization SEO at the time, but I
didn‟t know much about WordPress or the way
it uses permalinks as names for the posts.
Even more frustrating when I finally learned
about how this worked, was how the default
permalink settings are set up in WordPress.

4. As a non-programmer, I don‟t understand why
they have the default setting the way it is, but
from an SEO point of view, it isn‟t very search
engine friendly.
The good news is, hopefully you’ve read
this before you set up your blog, or
better yet you might hire me to do all of
this stuff for you.

5. In either case, you should change the default
setting for your permalinks (the name of your
blog posts) setting before you post your first
piece of content.
And there are several ways to set up your
permalinks, so I‟m not telling you how to set
them up, but giving you some suggestions.

6. So log into your WP admin panel and
click on ‘settings” on the left hand
column, then click ‘permalinks’.
You‟ll see some radio buttons with some
default settings, then you‟ll see a „Custom
Structure‟ radio button on the bottom.

7. BIG WARNING IF YOU ALREADY HAVE
POSTS USING THE EXISTING DEFAULT
– IF YOU CHANGE YOU WILL LOSE ALL
LINKS AND THE PAGE WILL DISPLAY A
404 ERROR – GET TECHNICAL
SUPPORT WITH SETTING UP 301
REDIRECTS IF YOU HAVE EXISTING
POSTS

8. So you would choose the ‘Custom
Structure’ and use the parameters you
chose to display as the name of the post.
Here are some options according to the
WordPress Forum:
“There are many different formats, but the most
common, and most versatile looks like
http://example.com/category/post-name/
or http://example.com/year/month/day/post-
name

9. Some people eliminate some or all of the
date elements (day, month, year) to have
a shorter permalink format.”
Here are a list of parameters you can include
and what they will return as the post name:
%year% = The year of the post, four digits
%monthnum% = Month of the year
%day% = Day of the month
%hour% = Hour of the day
%minute% = Minute of the hour

10. %second% = Second of the minute
%postname% = A sanitized version of the
title of the post (post slug field on Edit
Post/Page panel). So “This Is A Great Post!”
becomes this-is-a-great-post in the URI (see
Using only %postname%).

11. Starting Permalinks with %postname%
is strongly not recommended for
performance reasons.
%post_id% = The unique ID # of the post
%category% = A sanitized version of the
category name (category slug field on
New/Edit Category panel). Nested sub-
categories appear as nested directories in the
URI.

12. Starting Permalinks with %category% is
strongly not recommended for performance
reasons.
%tag% = A sanitized version of the tag name
(tag slug field on New/Edit Tag panel).
Starting Permalinks with %tag% is
strongly not recommended for performance
reasons
%author% = A sanitized version of the author
name.

13. Starting Permalinks with %author% is
strongly not recommended for
performance reasons
Check out the entire forum post on
permalinks settings in WordPress
So I changed mine to /%postname%/
This allows me to get the best optimization
from each post as long as there are primary
keywords in the title.

14. Get You Business Found Faster!
Check Out Quantum SEO
Solutions Client Case Study
Videos