DISQUS

Jonathan Dingman · 1 year ago

Andy,

I'm completely with you on this one. I started doing this a couple months back.

I will almost always set a different slug than what my actual title of the article is. I've seen some huge SEO benefits for this and seen my traffic increase because of it.

SEO web hosting · 1 year ago

Thanks for the tips. I didn't know about the three number requirements from Google and the 301 plug-in. Sometimes I forget to change the slug to replace what the title field produces and I realize after the fatc that was a big oversight.
Great article.

Ed Sutherland · 1 year ago

Andy: I've bookmarked this article (which I don't do often, what with thousands of bookmarks already.)

Your piece enlightened me on two points:

Google News needs at least two numbers in the URL (I'd thought the permalink needed to end with numbers.)

Also, the Giraffe 301 redirect link was perfectly timed, now that I know I need to change my permalink to domain.com/year/mo/day/cat/post.

Andy Beal · 1 year ago

@SEOwh and Ed - there's a lot of confusion surrounding the use of numbers in permalinks and Google News. Some say that the numbers have to be unique, but I've found that not to be the case. You simply need to have at least three numbers--which is what we have.

Ed Sutherland · 1 year ago

@Andy: Just changed my permalink and shortened some amazingly-long slugs to richer keywords -- and the trackbacks followed right along. That bit of information was worth the price of admission. :)

Andy Beal · 1 year ago

@Ed - great, just make sure the old pages 301 to the new ones. ;-)

Vlad · 1 year ago

Andy,

Just my curiosity. What is your warning about "minimum requirements" to be included in Google News based on? I am not trying to be a smart ass. I have just recently decided to move my blog to a new domain, however retained "name" based only urls.

I am presuming your are speaking for your experience. How often does Google News syndicates the posts from this blog? What does it in terms of traffic?

Andy Beal · 1 year ago

@Vlad - there are a number of things Google News requires, in order to be included. It's a very strict process and I don't have all the details.

Jordan McCollum · 1 year ago

Wait a minute. Killer slugs? Andy, that's just sick and twisted. ;)

Hooray for Redirection. Have I ever mentioned how much I love it? ( ;) again.)

Stephanie Cox · 1 year ago

Great tips!
I've just started a blog and I'll be using your tips for sure!

Vlad · 1 year ago

Andy,

I never have, and probably never will have any of my blogs picked up by Google News. But I guess one can dream...

For several press releases I used on PRWeb I can tell that traffic from Google News can be significant. But I was wondering how does that compare to actually having a blog post syndicated by Google News?

Andy Beal · 1 year ago

@Vlad - traffic from a Google News syndicated post can vary depending on its placement in Google News. Let's just say I'd rather be in than out. ;-)

Tom Beaton · 1 year ago

Does that plug in create 301s if you change the permalink structure?

Andy Beal · 1 year ago

@Tom - I don't actually know. Maybe test it on a new blog to make sure, before rolling out on an existing blog.

TrishaLyn · 1 year ago

This is a great series...please keep the tips coming!

Seología · 1 year ago

Very neat article. Could you post a solution to Wordpress 2.5 screwing up the PAGES thinking they're POSTS once you use a custom permalink structure? Many thanks!

Christian Web Trends · 1 year ago

Andy, thanks for this article. I've been blogging with Wordpress for more than 2 years and never realized you could customize the slug for each post.

I've always used the predefined date and name-based permalink structure, but I'm curious...

- Is there any particular reason you don't include the date (in addition to the year and month) in your permalink structure?

- Is there any benefit to ending your permalink structure with .html

- Paul

Andy Beal · 1 year ago

@Seologia - sorry, I've not explored that bug yet.

@Christian WT - As I mentioned, the structure I used--no date and .html--was to facilitate a migration from Blogger. There's really no issue with including the date or excluding the page extension.

Rankmyday · 1 year ago

Tanks a lot for providing the redirection plugin ! Saved me a lot of time...

Nicolette Beard · 1 year ago

These are excellent tips for WP but what about other blogging platforms, Typepad in particular?

Andy Beal · 1 year ago

@Nicolette - I don't use Typepad, so can't offer any help. Does it offer the ability to change your slugs? The advice above is cross-platform, but you may need to adapt the implementation to your specific blog software.

Paul Baranda · 1 year ago

Every WP install that i do one of the immediate tweaks that i do is that I change the permalink slugs to just display the postname. You have control over keywords when using postname permalinks. I am also a firm believer that keyword rich permalinks get great results and rankings. Also to keep in mind that the order of keywords used in the permalinks can affect your rankings as well.

Paul

shane · 1 year ago

Thats true..

TropiGal · 1 year ago

Please, please, please tell more. I am complete neophyte, and I am fascinated.

Andy Beal · 1 year ago

Thanks all for the feedback. Another tip will come this week. :-)

Tom Lindstrom · 1 year ago

Nice tips, thanks for sharing.I will look into this.

Nicolette Beard · 1 year ago

For you Typepad users out there, I think I figured out how to do something similar to what Andy's talking about. It requires some design decisions because making changes to the "slug" aka the file name URL, changes the look of the page.

On the TP template above the write post window is "Title" window. I've never used it because it places extra large text above the blog post, but it does serve as the "Title" tag for the post/page.

When you "name" your post, not to be confused with the title, this then becomes your slug. It is limited to 15 characters including spaces. Once you've named your post, you cannot go back and change it. You can, however, go back and add page "Titles," if you want more keyword relevance.

Another thing about TP, the category pages are default page titles in the search results, so at the very least, you want to be naming your categories with keywords.

For me, it's a stylistic decision, only because my blog ranks for any number of keywords related to male midlife crisis.

But I will try this on my new blog, Bruise-Control.com since the audience is much broader.

Hope this helps anyone who's continuuing to read this thread.

Andy Beal · 1 year ago

@Nicolette - thanks for sharing the tip!

Amy Reis · 1 year ago

This was an awesome post, I definitely want to see #3! I, along with many others, it seems, was enlightened to how to do the 301 redirects along with the Google News tip. I was already using the default slug, but did not change the individual posts. Looks like I have some tweaking to do now. Don't worry, I won't forget the redirects ;)

Peter Blackman · 1 year ago

Got some ideas and learned some new terms from you blog. I am trying to increasing the ranking of my own blog.

Raj Krishnaswamy · 1 year ago

I wish I had known these things long ago and learnt it the hard way. As usual, I came to the party a little late!

Marchek · 1 year ago

wow. new to me.!

Tennyson Williams · 1 year ago

This is why I use blogger. I abandoned a wordpress blog that I had because it wasn't very user friendly for me and they wanted me to pay for everything that blogger offers for free. I have no problems with my slugs and blogger is owned by google. So even on the rare days that I am not writing a post with SEO in mind, google picks up that post and puts it on the 1st page, generally towards the top and generally within 1-3 days. I'd say that that's a bad thing except that google is used for 67% of searches. Yahoo comes in second at 27%. Not trying to make enemies here - just offering my perspective.

Tennyson Williams's last blog post..String Skipping

Tyler Harrington · 1 year ago

Nice post, thanks for the information.
How long does it usually take for a new blog to generate traffic. I've had my blog for a couple days now, allaboutstocksandfinance.com, and there has been very minimal traffic. How long should I expect to wait?

Tyler Harrington's last blog post..Hot Stocks (8-15-2008)

San Nayak · 1 year ago

I just changes one of my post which had a typo in title, i wish i would have "Urban Giraffe “Redirection” plugin" installed already.

San Nayak's last blog post..BAPS Shri Swaminarayan Mandir Bartlett, Chicago, IL, 60103

Hotel website design · 12 months ago

This is a really good resource for bloggers. It answers a number of questiosn I have had on my mind and it is very nicely written.

Good job!

puinventory · 11 months ago

Thank you

Wii · 11 months ago

Great tips. I never really thought about how the permalink would affect my seo. I always thought about the content and keywords and also the fact that I should use words instead of php links but never really thought about what they should be saying.

Ali Hussain · 11 months ago

Great tip, i found the .html extension that i wanted to implement on my wordpress. Is there a part 3 to the tips

Ali Hussain's last blog post..Color Overlay

Tomasz Klekot · 10 months ago

You should also check out Seo Post Link wordpress plugin - it removes unnecessery words like "the" from the slug. Shorter url is better url.

Tomasz Klekot's last blog post..The Start

Seo Guy · 10 months ago

Andy,

This is the first post of yours that i have read and must say worth all the effort listening to the friend of my and visiting you blog. You rock man. Thanks for all the great points that you made.

Seo Guy's last blog post..Forum Post Exchange

malcolm · 10 months ago

Seo friendly urls are a bit of a myth, SEs don't care. Do waht you suggest - but do it because humans will react better. Google doesn't care ...

malcolm's last blog post..SEO friendly URLs: myth and fact

oyun · 10 months ago

Thanks for the tips.

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