The right permalink settings in WordPress

A poor permalink structure has far-reaching consequences 

Have you just set up a new WordPress installation and are wondering why your created pages have strange URLs like "www.cs-webdesigns.com/?p=123"?

The reason for this is an incorrect permalink structure. The number you see there is the so-called ID that WordPress creates for every page and every post. Apart from WordPress, nobody can do anything with this number:

• Does not look good
• Not really easy to remember
• Not meaningful in relation to the topic.

Therefore, the URL structure adapted in every case become!

Not only to improve the User Experience of your visitors, but also for the Search engine optimization! Search engines like Google always want to deliver the best results to their users. They can only do this if they can quickly and easily find out what is shown on your page. A simple method for this is the right URL for the topic.

What are permalinks?

Before we get to the right settings, we should clarify what permalinks actually are.

It's not complicated. In the end, permalink is just another word in the WordPress world for URL or link of a website.

Which permalink structure suits my site?

In WordPress, you can find the permalink setting under Settings - Permalink.

There you will find the following picture in front of you:

• Simple & Numerical

These are exactly the settings you should use if you want to do it the way it should be done. not should be.

• Day & name and month & name

This setting makes sense for large news sites that publish a large number of articles per day.

• Contribution name

This is the attitude that the best choice for 95% of WordPress sites is. This allows visitors (and search engines) to immediately recognize what is behind the URL. For example, my subpage for search engine optimization is under www.cs-webdesigns.com/organisches-online-marketing or my maintenance packages under www.cs-webdesigns.com/wordpress-wartung to find. So you already know from the URL that you will find information on SEO and WordPress maintenance there.

• Individual structure

As the name suggests, you can use this setting to customize your URLs. There are placeholders for this, e.g. day, month, year, category. In my experience, this is only necessary in individual cases.

What does a good permalink look like?

Finally, we should ask ourselves what requirements a permalink should fulfill.

From my point of view, a permalink should as short as possible and as long as necessary be, relevant keywords of the article and the Clarify the general website structure.

Conclusion