We’ve seen quite a few blogs recently that are running WordPress and using the default setting for permalinks. It’s unfortunate that this is the default, because it really does nothing for you in the way of SEO. However, there’s a quick fix for this that should help your blog posts get a little more notice.
If you log in to your WordPress blog and scroll down, you will see a “Settings” section on the left hand side. Clicking the arrow will drop down a menu and one of the options will be “Permalinks.” Clicking that will take you to the Permalinks page where you will see the different options you can choose.
The default looks something like http://blog.name.com/?p=167 and that doesn’t really tell readers or search engines anything about your post.
This can be easily changed on the Permalinks page by selecting either the Day or Month options, or even adding your own custom structure using the syntax that WordPress provides. You probably want to stay away from the Numeric option, as that won’t do much for your SEO either.
After saving your changes, your blog URL will look like http://blog.name.com/2010/06/name-tip-better-seo-with-wordpress-permalinks/, which is not only better for SEO, but now your readers have information like subject and date just by looking at your URL.
We hope that helps some of you out there that may not have even known this setting existed. Cheers and happy blogging!