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What Permalink Structure Should I Be Using?

June 18, 2007 by Trish Jones  
Filed under Website Promotion Strategies

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In my last post, I spoke about the importance of permalink structures, but it seems the one I recommended isn’t without it’s issues.

I told you that I personally use the custom permalink structure  /%postname%/  which hasn’t seemed to be an issue until now…  but yesterday, I started getting all kinds of errors with my feeds and when I tried to check for feed validation, I get another error saying that my feed isn’t valid.

After some digging around, I found a discussion on the Semiologic Forum and Denis de Bernardy, the developer of Semiologic, states that using the custom permalinks structure  /%postname% will make make WordPress think that yoursite.com/feed is the post titled /feed.  In other words, it makes WP confuse your posts, pages, and feed urls.

So, having shyed away from using the default date/name based structure, it seems that this is the one Denis and many others recommend because it’s just as good for SEO, and it’s much better for usability.

This is what yours would look like, using the date/name based structure:

http://www.yourdomainname.com/2007/06/12/sample-post/

  

 

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4 Responses to “What Permalink Structure Should I Be Using?”

  1. Manuel Viloria on July 20th, 2007 4:16 pm

    Hi, Trish! I use the /%postname%/ permalink structure (WordPress v 2.2.1), and the feed validates properly using the feed validation service you linked to in your post.

    Is the Semiologic Theme affecting your feed (based on a postname permalink structure)?

  2. Trish Jones on July 20th, 2007 4:41 pm

    Hi Manuel, In fact, I’ve changed mine back to /%postname%/ now and it’s fine.   And yes, Semiologic did have a lot to do with it.  Once I fixed that, my feeds were fine. So Manuel, my advice to you is that if it aint broke, don’t fix it! :-)

    If you do get a problem in the future, try changing the structure but the truth is, I’ve looked at the permalink structures of some of the highest ranking blogs and they use the name and date structure successfully. Darren Prowse of http://www.problogger.net and http://www.semiologic.com are two prime examples. So, I don’t think the jury is quite out on which permalink structure is best for SEO but I would say name and date based is better for trackbacks.

    My best, Trish

  3. Internet Marketing on August 15th, 2008 10:10 am

    Your blog is very informative. However, it is pretty hard task but your
    post and experienced serve and teach me how to handle and make it more
    simple and manageable.

    Thanks for the tips… Best regards.

  4. Internet Marketing on August 21st, 2008 4:16 am

    Your blog is very informative. However it is pretty hard task but your post and experienced serve and teach me how to handle and make it more simple and manageable.

    Thanks for the tips… Best regards.

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