What are permalinks and how can they help your blog get found?

By Rocketstone

We talked about choosing a catchy title for your blog that will attract interest and get people intrigued in your blogpost. A really good title will get more clicks on social media and more search engine results.

Very often a blogpost will use the title text as the article’s permalink.

What is a permalink?

Answer: A permalink is simply a URL (blog address) that points to a specific blog entry after it has passed from the front page to the archives.

For example, the address (the url) of this blogpost is:

http://www.rocketstone.ca/permalinks-help-blogs-get-found

The part that comes after the .ca/ is called the “slug”

In other words: permalinks-help-blogs-get-found

How can we improve the permalink so that it will result in better SEO?

Answer: Try to make the slug about 4 or 5 words. If your slug is 15 words it can start to look like spam and Google will interpret it as such. Google recommends using three to five words in the slug of your permalink. More words will be given less weight by Google and can even take away from the value of a good permalink. Also, make an effort to use only words in the slug of your permalink. Numbers do not add value to a permalink.

If you have a wordpress blog and you want to be able to set a custom permalink, just go to Permalink Settings and select the Post Name option or Custom Structure. This way you can use text in your permalinks that makes sense.

The point here is that the shorter and more meaningful your URL is, the more chance it will benefit you in respect to SEO results.

Great titles can be summarized into excellent slugs which will enhance your search engine results.
If you have some expertise about permalinks, please share in the comment box below. Having an understanding of permalinks can be an important part of your SEO knowledge.

Bruce Langford is President of Rocketstone Business Marketing Solutions
www.rocketstone.ca