Optimizing your post slugs will give you a SEO advantage!
[This is part of the Developing Great Blog Content Series and The Blogger’s Essential Guide to Search Engine Optimization Series.]
If you’re like most bloggers then you probably share a very similar publishing workflow like this:
- Create awesome super-duper Title of the Post
- Write Post
- Choose Category(ies)
- Insert Tags (or not! I don’t use tags – in fact, I really don’t like them!)
- Review Post (or not)
- Hit ‘Publish’
- Relax and watch the pageview count increase and the comments roll in!
Right? Well, there are a few other things that I’ve inserted in my publishing workflow and one of them is strategically using custom post slugs just before I hit the ‘Publish’ button.
Not sure what I’m talking about? Here’s what’s up:
The Art and Science of Post Slug Awesomeness
Your post slug is simply the direct permalink (learn more about awesome WordPress permalinks here) or URL to your post.
For example, it’s this:
You can click that image for a larger view or you can just take a look at this closeup:
Wow, now that is a long post slug!
1 | http://thebloggess.com/2011/02/ill-be-available-for-hire-next-week-if-the-rest-of-the-chupacabra-body-goes-up-for-sale/ |
What this author has done is simply publish her blog post without considering how long and how ugly that post slug is! Her post slug is her title with the addition of the calendar year and month before it.
How long is that post slug in characters? 119 characters long! Yikes!
What You Should Do Instead
So what should you do instead? Here is what you need to know:
- After deciding on your permalink structure (go here to get some guidance on WordPress permalinks) you’ll want to make sure your slug is as short as possible.
- Industry research has shown (as well as personal experience) that URLs based on site architecture that is more “flat” performs better in SEO than ones that do not.
- This flat directly structure is very different than a deeply nested directory and structure.
- You maximize keyword density on your permalink and URL instead of diluting it with 20 different other words. This helps with SEO as well. This fact is not to be passed over!
- It’s also much more user friendly to use smaller permalinks than longer ones.
- If they are smaller they are much more easy to remember and thus use. I can’t tell you how many people have asked me about a “particular” post and I’m able to tell them instantly what the post URL is since it’s so short!
- It communicates to your users (and search engines) the content of the post more clearly.
- Completely get rid of extraneous words, like the following: the, as, if a, an, and others. These do not contribute to your SEO!
- Include only targeted keywords that specifically match that particular piece of content.
- Shorter the better. I said it already but it is worth repeating.
Need some great examples? Go through all of my posts in my Archives Page and you’ll find that every single post is completely optimized for SEO in terms of the URL slugs!
Some Examples
Here are 5 examples for you to look at:
One of my favorites and most used!
Keep it simple, short, and easy.
I use only one keyword in this very long title for the slug!
'How much to charge' is a very common question. My post grabs SEO!
Very memorable for me and the readers.
You can click any of those images to get a closer look.
Is it wrong to have long titles? Obviously not! But it’s wrong to have a long title and a long post slug and permalink.
As you can see it’s both an art and a science and over time you’ll get more comfortable and become better at it!
Remember, you can always change your post slugs at any time from within the post directly or in the Global Posts screen:
Change post slugs easily!
Or here (just hit “Quick Edit”):
Hit "Quick Edit" and then change your slug.
That’s it!
If you haven’t been optimizing your post slugs from the very beginning then now’s the time to start doing it! If you have the gumption (and drive) you could easily go back and change all of the post slugs to optimize for SEO. Sure, it’s a time commitment but it’s worth it in the long-run, especially if you’re going to be “Pro” as a Professional Blogger (or just want to be generally more effective with your blog).
Good luck and have fun with it! Hit me up with any questions in the comments!
[This is part of the Developing Great Blog Content Series and The Blogger’s Essential Guide to Search Engine Optimization Series.]
Excellent advice, John. I know I can definitely be creating shorter, more focused slugs for my posts.
The one thing I worry about, however, is trying to create a page in the future with a short slug I’ve already used for a post. Not the biggest deal, but it might suck to try to create a landing page targeting a main keyword you want to rank for only to realize the slug isn’t available. Sure you could revise the original, but that might be dangerous if it’s attracted links.
I’m not as tech savvy as you, so I wonder if you might have any advice here that only a super-coder would know – ideas?
if you have redirects that can help. or if you’re using WP’s perm structure it should have some redirection built in.
For example… click this:
http://tentblogger.com/how-i-monetize-and-make-money-blogging-and-how-much-i-make-per-year/
it auto-redirects to my new slug.
Hey John, I’m wondering how you achieved that auto-redirection?
did you see my 404 errors post?
http://tentblogger.com/404-errors/
Great stuff brother. Slugs are fun to play around with and can drive traffic alone with a solid one!
Thanks for giving this to us all.
Totally love playing with slugs too!
sure thing. it does.
I noticed your URLs a couple weeks ago and began changing mine. I’ve been going back through old posts fixing those slugs up too. Thanks for going into detail on this great topic!
good job!
Learn something new every day. I will start using this. Thanks again John.
cool beans!
How does changing the slug of an article affect any current inbound links? If I go back and change all my slugs, would any inbound links be broken?
I imagine it would affect incoming links unless you have the old permalinks direct to the new permalinks.
If I were you, I would probably just start using shorter permalinks for all new posts, and leave the existing as they are.
that can be a safe method!
if you’re using WP perms then it should auto-redirect depending on your configuration. should be fine.
Yay. I was doing something right and didn’t even know it. Cool beans.
hah. beginners luck.
Recently I switched from “All in one SEO” to “SEO Ultimate” which has an option that automates slug optimization. Love it…!!!
automation is dangerous. i don’t do that.
Awesome post John. I recently changed my permalink structure from /%year%/%monthnum%/%day%/%postname%/ to /%postname%/. I used this plugin (http://www.microkid.net/wordpress/permalinks-moved-permanently) to help me do it.
Shorter slugs = higher SEO. Good stuff!
great stuff bro!
Brilliant…and easier on everyone.
sure thing lacey!
This definitely adds a certain amount of ownership to your blog when you begin choosing names for your posts instead of letting someone else name it.
seriously.
Thanks for the tip John. As always, it was extremely helpful. I’m going to start doing this with all my posts from now on!
go for it!
Updating some old posts and changing my approach for the future!
go for it! it’s going to be worth it!
Wow! I’ve haven’t hit the mark in this area. Thanks for clarifying. After 480 plus posts to date, I’m going to make the adjustments to improve on my slugs.
it’s well worth it, for sure.
So this might be a silly question…Can you only choose a slug once in the life of your blog? EG if you wrote 5 posts on a particular topic over a couple of years would you have to use 5 different slugs?
yes. you’d use five different slugs.
Hi John
Many thanks for the SLUG’S Tip my friend.
You have increased my knowledge 10fold
on SLUGS..really appreciate the blog.
rgds
Mark
sure thing mark!
thanks john! learning so much from you!
Right on John,
I’ve been rocking this plugin just to save some time, and it does an incredible job of doing that, but it’s definitely better to customize the slug if you can take the time to do it.
http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/seo-slugs/
neat, let me see.
John,
the post slug on this post is: “/post-slugs/”. What about the next time you create content on slugs, what will you use the next time? And how on earth do you keep track of the ones you have already used? You mentioned above about “redirecting” and how WP’s perm structure has it built in, but did not really explain either point. Sorry if I have made this more confusing than it should be!
mark,
if i do another post on post slugs i’ll target a more specific keyword. done!
Oh dear me, I just redid all the slugs on my blog, after reading this awesome post. But i realized that all the Twitter retweets, likes, and stumblecounts that I’ve accumulated have all disappeared. I figure that’s because they come together with the URL they were previously attached to.
Drats!
yeah, but that’s fine. no big loss!
Slugs are gross, John. But I’ll try this.