After you have successfully designed your own WordPress website, it is time to launch it. After this you naturally wonder whether your website is easy to find on the internet. For this, your WordPress website must have the right permalinks for this. In WordPress you can easily check what the permalinks of your website look like and whether they are unique enough so that people can easily find your website. In this article you can read what it means for your website to contain unique permalinks and how you can adjust them to make your website even more findable on the internet.
What do permalinks mean for my WordPress website?
Just like any other website, your WordPress website has its own unique URL. Just like your website, all the different posts and pages on your website have their own URL, which is also called a permalink. By means of this permalink, both you and all your customers can find your website and all relevant pages on the internet.
Choosing the right permalinks is more important than you think
Having unique permalinks is extremely important for your WordPress website. Each search engine records website pages to keywords. So when your customers are looking for your website and enter its name in a search engine such as Google or Bing, you naturally want the right website to be at the top of the list of search results. In addition, you want to have the right permalinks for your WordPress website as soon as possible, so that you do not have to adjust them later. To ensure that your website is found quickly and easily on the internet, setting up the right permalinks is therefore of great importance.
Pay attention to these points when customizing your permalinks in WordPress
Of course, it is possible to adjust the URLs of your own website in WordPress in different ways. For example, it is possible to set a default permalink via the ‘Settings’ menu, which is reflected in all URLs of your WordPress website. However, there are a number of points that you should pay attention to when adjusting your permalinks in WordPress.
Choose the right structure for all your URLs
First, it’s important to think about what kind of structure you want to give your URLs. When your URLs do not have a fixed structure, they will quickly appear sloppy and unclear. Therefore, choose one of the following formats and use it as the default URL for each message.
- https://www.websitenaam.nl/?b=L
- https://www.websitenaam.nl/jaar/maand/dag/berichtnaam/
- https://www.websitenaam.nl/berichtnaam/
In general, the third option is often chosen, because these URLs look a bit nicer than the first option. In addition, with the third option you create a unique URL, with which your customers can find your website even easier on the internet.
WordPress categories and tags
Of course, it is also important that you set a unique permalink for each category and tag on your WordPress website. To maintain the structure of all URLs on your website, make sure that the permalinks for both the categories and tags on your website conform to the same structure. For example, your permalinks can then look like this:
- https://www.websitenaam.nl/categorienaam/berichtnaam
- https://www.websitenaam.nl/tagnaam/berichtnaam
Make sure you have the right redirects for your WordPress URLs
It is possible that after some time you decide to change the permalinks of your WordPress website, for example to increase the findability of your website. When you make a small adjustment to your permalinks, WordPress automatically ensures that all URLs of your website are redirected to the correct new URL. However, this does not happen when you make a larger adjustment to the permalinks of your WordPress website and an error message is given. In this case, you have to check all the URLs of your website and possibly manually redirect to the new URL.
Don’t panic about error messages in WordPress after permalink adjustments
When you are busy adjusting your permalinks, it can happen that you then get an error message. A common error message is the inability to create the .htaccess file. This file ensures that the adjustments to your permalinks are made on your WordPress website and that all data remains secure on your server. If you experience problems while customizing your permalinks, you can fix them in WordPress by, for example, creating a new file named “.htaccess” or modifying the file permissions of the .htaccess file via the File Transfer Protocol ( FTP), so that your customizations to your permalinks can be processed.
Help with customizing your permalinks in WordPress is always there for you
Adjusting your permalinks is not easy for everyone. Do you want to change the URLs and permalinks of your WordPress website, so that people can easily find your website? Or do you constantly run into error messages when you try to adjust the permalinks in WordPress? Do not hesitate to get advice from an experienced WordPress specialist to complete your website.
