Using permalinks, the previous URL becomes something like http://mysite.com/cooking-tips-tricks.

Why Use Permalinks?

Besides being easier to remember and use, permalinks can have positive impact on your search engine rankings.

It is believed that Google ranks pages based on appearance of keywords in the URL, among other factors. You can see a hint confirming the theory in the actual search results page, as all keywords appearing in the URL will be highlighted as well.

Setting up Permalink structure

Permalinks are edited in Settings->Permalinks screen, and best results are made if you enable  “Custom structure”. Custom means you can define permalink structure by using one of many permalink tags. Most useful are %postname% (title of the post), %post_id% (id of the post) and %category% (post category, if in multiple categories first created category will be used).

Most basic usage is only having %postname% tag and as an example you can see urls on my site which are using this structure.

Recently I am more inclined to think that using  %category%/%postname% may yield you better results if category names contain keywords you want to rank for.

Setting Permalinks for Google News

If you want to list your site in Google News, one of the requirements is to have at least three digit identifier at the end of every URL.

This is easily accomplished using %postname%-%post_id% structure, which will append post ID to the end of url so it becomes http://mysite.com/cooking-tips-tricks-344. You only have to create at least 100 pages first in order to have three digits at the end

Conclusion

Since permalinks cost you nothing to set up, there is no reason not to use them. This should be the first step you do when you install a WordPress blog as changing permalinks at a later time requires more work (you will have all incoming links to your old urls).

Tip #1 – Stop Linking to Other Sources

Now, you can’t stop linking to web site all together on your own domain, but you can cut down on the number of links you do.  Save them for when you absolutely need to.  Each time you link to  a different domain, you give your visitors a way to exit your web page.

Also, search engines don’t like pages that have tons of useless links.  If you need to link to a source, first ask yourself if you have something on that topic yourself somewhere on your web site.  Link to yourself and keep that search engine spider on your own web site.  One single, good, authoritative link can do a lot more for you than a dozen crappy links, which can actually hurt you.

Tip #2 – Fresh Content, Delivered Daily!

Adding content to your web site can always help improve your rankings.  OF course, be sure to keep it useful and based around quality content, rather than just trying to get another page up about something.

Tip #3 – Controversy Creates Cash Links Back

Don’t be afraid to write about something controversial or targeting related content that will get a lot of eyeballs to check out your web site.  Start searching around for what people are looking for when browsing your type of web site and target your content based around that idea.  Create something that naturally attracts backlinks for your web page and gets people talking about your site.

Tip #4 – Put Your Page Title Before Your Web Site Title

When it comes to formatting your web site for the Web, be sure to pay attention to how you have written your web site titles, and what is listed up there.  For pages, you should put your page title before the web site title.  Such as:

How to Register a Domain Name | FreeWebHostingWorld.com

There, I have identified what the page is about, and listed my web site name in the correct order.  Some people have even dropped listing the web site title too. Play around with your titles and see what gives you the best results.

Tip #5 – Pay Attention to Analytics

Be sure to check in on your web site statistics software daily, to watch for popularity trends, and see what pages are performing the best – and which might need some work done on them.  If you don’t have a good web page statistics package right now, I would highly recommend you look into using the Google Analytics service.  It is free to use, and much better than even some of the paid analytics software suits out there.

Have another SEO tip that you think would be handy (along with these quick tips)? Leave a comment and share your own easy search engine optimization tutorials and suggestions.