The permanent link in WordPress (or permalink) refers to the link through which you can access the content of any of the articles or pages of your site. While you are browsing the current article, if you look in the site link box above, you will find that the permanent link to this article is:
You type this link in your browser to reach the current page.
Also, every article within the site and every page also has a permanent link.https://wppr.net/uploading-photos-issues-in-wordpress/
What we will talk about today is customizing this link in the best way, and how it can be used in a healthy way that benefits your site in terms of SEO , and other very important things that you should know as long as you want your site to have the best user experience that can be provided.
Benefits of permalinks
Notice the following image shows how the Google search engine shows the link to the article on the SEO guide for WordPress sites . What you see is the permanent link to that article.
You may have noticed that the first benefit of allocating a good permanent link to your website’s articles and internal pages, as the permanent link appears in a completely decent manner and is only two words WordPress-seo, where the user can read it and save it easily in order to return to it at any later time without spending a lot of time searching. About the article link.
Therefore, here are the most important benefits that will benefit your site if permanent links are allocated correctly on your WordPress site:
- Easy to read and access the link
- The link will look great when shared on social media
- It is easy for other website owners to place links to your articles and pages on their sites
- Search engines display the permanent link to your site’s content in an organized manner
The image above shows two different examples of permalinks. Before you continue the article, stop here for a moment and look at the two links. Tell yourself which one is better in terms of clarity of content?
Customize permalinks in WordPress
It is good that WordPress provides many options for customizing and configuring permalinks for articles and internal pages in an excellent manner, and during the following paragraphs we will explain to you the tools and options that WordPress provides you in order to customize permalinks in the best possible way:
Customize permalinks from your control panel settings
When you enter the WordPress control panel and then go to: Settings << Permanent Links , the window for editing and customizing permalinks in WordPress will open:
The previous image shows the permanent links customization window, which shows the templates that you can rely on, or you can customize and apply any of them to all the site’s links at the same time.
Below we explain the most important differences between these types and forms of permanent links, which must be well understood in order to determine the best and most appropriate combination for your site in order to improve the user experience, as well as improve the readability of your site for the search engine.
- ” normal “
In this type of permanent link, the link format is as follows: www.example.com/p=123
Meaning that the link assigned to the article or page consists of numbers that are fetched from within the database, as every article or page that is published within your site is stored within the databases and takes its own identification number that is completely distinct from the rest of the other articles and pages.
This type is not considered friendly to search engines, because it contains only numbers that do not express the content of the page, so the phrase p=123 does not understand what the article contains and what the main topic it addresses. You will find this type activated by default when you install WordPress on your site, but it is preferable to change it to one of the other search engine-friendly formats.
- Today + article title
In this type of permanent link, the form of the link is as follows: https://www.example.com/2021/01/31/sample-post
, meaning that the form of the permanent link to the articles and pages of your site will by default consist of the link to your site and then the date in today’s format. Month, year, then the title of your article.
This type of link is somewhat useful, but it may seem long sometimes for articles that contain a large title, but this type may be useful for owners of news sites or any sites that publish news or content that must display the date of publication, starting with the day and month. And the Sunnah, due to the difference in importance and priority of that news for readers.
- Month + article title
In this type of permanent link, the form of the link is as follows: https://www.example/2021/01/sample-post/
, meaning that the form of the link will be a link to your site, then the date in the form of the month and year, then the title of your article. .
This type is very similar to the previous type “today + article title”, except that it does not contain only the day.
- Digital
In this type, the permanent link format is as follows: https://www.example.com/archives/123
This type is like the first type, “normal,” in which an identification number is specified that distinguishes the article from the rest of the site’s articles. It is not preferable to use this type because it does not Expresses the content of the page.
- Article title
In this type, the link to the articles and website pages appears as follows: https://www.example.com/sample-post/
, meaning that immediately after the website link or the domain name, the full article title is placed, and thus the permanent link is largely descriptive, and can be relied upon. It is to convey an idea to the reader or visitor about the content that is discussed within one of the site’s articles.
This type is one of the most suitable types for the link’s ease of reading and its appearance in an understandable way for the search engine. We recommend that you select this type (article title) to be used by default for all its pages.
- Custom combination
This type is one of the integrated and flexible options in WordPress, which gives you many unlimited options to change the appearance of your site and links as you want.
In the custom structure, you can create your own structure in the form of permanent links to your site as you wish, without adhering to those previous types that WordPress suggests to you.
As you notice the elements highlighted in red, you can choose from them to be included within the permanent link structure of your site’s articles and pages.
For example, when choosing the combination %category%, the article’s category name will be included in the link, while %postname% displays the title of the article within the permanent link. You can also choose %author% to place the author’s name within the permanent link, and so on for the rest of the combinations.
Therefore, the custom structure provides you with all the options you are looking to display within your site’s permalinks.
In all cases, you must take care that the permanent link is simple and understandable, and reflects the content of your site completely.
Note : It is best to change and customize permanent links immediately after you install WordPress on your site, because if they are changed after publishing a lot of articles and content within your site, this may cause you a lot of problems, whether with search engines or links that were shared in external places, especially After changing all the links to it, we will talk about solving this problem in the rest of the article.
Some SEO plugins, such as the Yoast plugin, show a notification or alert to the site owner when the permanent link structure is not friendly to search engines, such as random numbers in the types we previously explained.
Manually customize permalinks
In the previous paragraphs, we discussed how to change the shape and configuration of permanent links on the site by default for all pages of the site. However, if you want to change the permanent link to one of the articles or specific pages manually for the page individually, we will do the following procedures.
You can enter the article or page editing page, and go to the article editing tools window, in which you will find the “Permanent Link” box . When you click on it, the box will open for you to change the components and name of the permanent link for the article or page:
As you can see above, you can change the structure of the permanent link and put clear text instead of numbers, for example.
Note : It is not always recommended to change article links frequently because it may take time for the search engine to re-index the page in some cases.
Also, just as the permanent link for articles can be changed, the permanent link for categories can also be changed, as you can enter the WordPress control panel and then go to Articles << Categories
Enter the category for which you want to change the permanent link, and let it be the category (Breaking News ) shown in the previous experimental example.
Then the page for editing the classification and its properties will open for you, which includes the “nice name ” option, which is the name that appears in the permanent link, which can be changed so that the form of the permanent link to the classification and its components changes based on the value of the nice name.
In the same way, you can also change the permanent link to tags on your site:
Go to the “ Tags ” tab and select the tag you want to change the permanent link to, and change the value of the “Nice Name” exactly as we explained in changing the nice name for categories.
Customize permalinks using plugins
As you noticed in the previous paragraphs, the default settings for WordPress contain many options that help you modify and customize permanent links to your site’s articles and pages in the form and structure you want without the need to use an external plugin.
However, here we are talking about one add-on that provides you with options that are not found in the default settings of WordPress, which is changing the permanent link to the Authors page on the site.
The Edit Author Slug add-on provides the feature of changing the permanent link to Authors book pages within your site or members participating in the site.
To use the plugin to change the permanent link to one of the members’ pages, log in to the WordPress control panel and then go to: Members << All Members to show you a list of registered members on the site:
Choose one of the members you want to change the permanent link to their pages on the site, let it be the writer named “sotrit”. Upon entering his membership editing page, we will find options that the add-on has now provided that allow changing the permanent link to the member’s page:
When you select the Author slug option on the Edit Writer Membership page, click Custom and write the nice name you want to appear in the permanent link to the member page on the site, then click Save .
Change permalinks without affecting SEO
If you change the permanent link for all links on your site, or change it for one of the articles or pages on the site, the old link will be deleted, and then when you try to access it, WordPress will show a 404 error page, which indicates that the landing page is not available on the site.
This matter may negatively affect your site if you change permanent links when your site is published and appears in various search results and its links are shared across social media platforms. The solution to this problem is to do redirection .
To avoid this problem facing your site links whose permanent link configuration has been changed, you can use one of the free add-ons that easily redirects those links to avoid error pages appearing on your site. One of the most famous of these add-ons is the Redirection add-on.
After installing and activating the plugin on the site, you can log in to the WordPress control panel and then go to: Tools << Redirection
A window will open for you to redirect any old link on your site, where you will write the old link in the Source URL field, and put the new link in the Target URL field.
Thus, you will have avoided the problem of your old site links being broken, and you will not lose the visits that come to you from search engines on old links, as well as from sharing old links across various Internet platforms.
questions and answers
What is the best combination for a permanent link?
Changing the site’s permanent links is appropriate in some cases in which the link configuration does not express the site’s content perfectly. If we look at news sites that display the date, such as day, month, and year, within the permanent links to their articles and news, this thing seems completely logical in the case of those sites that You post content that is highly relevant to the date of publication.
But if you own a site that provides medical content, for example, the presence of the date in creating permanent links may make some users not want to open your articles that indicate the date in old private links, for example! Everyone wants to get exclusive, new and updated content.
Do I need to include the category name within the permanent link?
As we explained previously, the name of the category for your site’s articles can be included in the permanent link structure. You add the description %category% to the permanent links structure from the Special Structures box on the Permanent Links Settings page.
However, it is not necessary to include the category name within the permanent link, but if your site has a small domain name that is suitable for adding the category name with it along with the article title, then there is no problem .
After all, permalinks are so called because they are permanent and do not change. From this standpoint, think carefully before changing those permanent links within your site, unless there is a strong and unavoidable reason, and try to use the best combination by default
