The primary purpose of a website is to promote your business, boost your sales, and sell your products or services to people worldwide. This purpose isn’t fulfilled unless your website appears on the first page when someone searches for one of the products or the service you are selling.
It takes some time and a lot of effort to get your website to appear at the top of a Search Engine Result Page. One of the best ways to rank your website in the top ten is by doing SEO of your website, and one of the best ways to maximize your Search Engine Optimization is by using permalinks.
In this article, we will teach you how to use permalinks to maximize your search engine optimization.
What is a permalink?
The permalink is another name for the URL of your website page. It never changes unless you change it intentionally. A permalink has a site’s Top-Level Domain (TLD) and the description of a page it directs to, e.g., https://ssdhosters.com/blog/.
A perfect permalink should have the following features in its format.
- It should be clean, comfortable to remember, and as short as possible. Such strong permalinks stand out more SERPs.
- A descriptive permalink is more manageable for a search engine to match with the entered query.
Any permalink must have the mentioned features; otherwise, it won’t appear on the first page of the search engine and will remain buried.
Tips for highly optimized permalinks
1. Use relevant keywords
One of the best ways to boost your SEO is to use a permalink with relevant keywords. You can create such permalink by slotting your choosing page keywords into your permalink. In case you don’t know what keywords to use, use the SEO tools to get relevant keywords.
If you are using a custom permalink, make sure you insert the most relevant keyword in it. If you are using a format based permalink, always make sure the appropriate keyword is included. Doing so will give some extra keyword density to the search engine.
2. Always use hyphens in your permalink
A highly optimized permalink always is more readable than others. To make it more readable, separate the words in your permalink with hyphens. Hyphenated permalinks are more readable for humans, and to some extent, they also help search engines efficiently process the link.
For instance, ssdhosters.com/blog/beginners-guide-to-seo-friendly-blog-formatting
3. Keeps your link short
A permalink with no more than 60 characters is more likely to be ranked higher on SERPs. If you take a look, the top-ranked links have no more than 60 characters in them. You can shorten the permalink by removing words such as “of,” “at,” “to,” “in,” etc. Include only the most relevant terms that clearly describes the page.
If you can’t hit the target, make sure the link is as short as possible, and make sure you don’t compromise on the structure, i.e., relevant keywords separated by hyphens.
4. Your permalinks should not contain dates
Using dates in your permalink has a few drawbacks. A permalink with a date mentioned in it not only does have a little SEO value but also damages your daily traffic. Here is how
- Including the date means increasing the permalink length, which, as we mentioned earlier, is bad for SEO.
- A permalink with a date on it has an expiry date; when a viewer looks at it, the first thing he will think about is that this page has outdated content. No matter how relevant the content is, no viewer would click on the link if it’s outdated.
Above were the reasons why you should not mention dates in your permalinks. Just make sure your permalink has relevant keyword separated by hyphens, and it is as short as possible.
5. Consistent structure
This tip will help boost your site traffic, make sure your permalink structure is consistent across the entire site. Doing so will help the reader understand what the site’s offering and where they are on your site at a given time? A user-friendly site would attract more visitors and will increase your site’s organic traffic.
Conclusion
Permalinks are one of the most vital factors when it comes to a site’s SEO. An adequately used permalink is a powerful SEO tool for propelling your site to the top of the SERPs. A highly optimized permalink will always have the following features.
- It will consist of relevant keywords
- Hyphens will separate the keywords
- The permalink will be as short as possible.
- It won’t consist of any dates
- It will have a consistent structure throughout the website.
