WordPress lets you to choose permalink structure from available options or make a custom structure of your own. The permalinks format you choose depends on personal liking but it’s definitely a must to consider your site content when making your decision. Let me explain it better. For instance if your site is a proper blog with frequent posting then the most suitable structure is “/%year%/%monthnum%/%day%/%postname%/”. Let’s say you are having a site full of recipes. In this case date doesn’t matter much and you can go with the permalink structure “/%category%/%postname/”. Suppose if your site has posts with “timeless” content then your permalink can just be “/%postname%/”.

Choose one and Stick with it forever

Once you have finalized an optimal permalink structure for your site, stick with it for the entire life of your site. Many people would have linked their sites to your blog posts and if you change your post permalinks then that useful links which are pointing to your site turns useless. I accept that modern versions of WordPress are capable of redirecting  modified URLs to right place but if the modified url is completely different your blog readers may feel that they are getting redirected to some other post. So if you definitely want to change it change slightly.

Have Post Slugs in Mind for better SEO

In WordPress each URL has a “slug” which is a special string of characters that represents the post URLs in a SEO-friendly way. For example, let us consider you write a post titled “33 Ways to Make a Pizza, Plus one wrong way of making Pizza,” and now the auto generated WordPress slug for this post will be like this:

33-ways-to-make-a-pizza-plus-one-wrong-way-of-making-pizza

Here you’re using /%postname%/ in your permalink structure and that’s fine but the post slug is too long. Many SEO experts say that such incredibly long URLs are bad for SEO. Fortunately WordPress allows you to edit post slug anytime. When you enter the post title and click some where on the screen a small box having the post slug appears below the title box. If it doesn’t appear for you then just save the post, it will start appearing. Post slug box has “edit” button next to it. So it is very simple to modify the post slug. Avoid using special characters in post slugs. Always use lowercase letters, numbers, colon and dashes or underscores.

See some examples of post slugs

Good: http://pizzaplatter.com/how-to-make-a-pizza

Bad: http://clean-jokes.com/dumb-jokes/12/2010/Where do you find a one legged dog?Where you left it

Worst: http://www.blogingjogging.com/boards/filename.php?id=L29ZF4&productId=88922&section=wicked&brand=702&template=387

If you use long URLs keep it simple. That’s enough.

Sharp tips for creating optimal permalinks:

• Keep it Short and Simple
• Keep URL structure relevant to site
• Slug must represent your post in the best way
• Easier to remember

If you have started a new blog then optimize your blog permalinks right now. If you have an old blog then just concentrate on making better post slugs hereafter instead of changing the whole permalink structure. If you have decided to change the whole permalink structure then see to that the new one doesn’t have too many changes.