WordPress Post Slugs : How to improve your Article URLS ?

Bad URL’s can make You extinct. Learn How you can write Better post Slugs for Your Blog Posts in WordPress.

What is the post Slug  ?

The post  Slug determines what would be the URL of your Blog Post when you publish it. It is located Just Below the title of your Post and If your Permalink  Structure is  a Friendly One then You should take utmost care While Writing the post slugs.

If you publish a post In WordPress Without bothering about the post Slug then WordPress Automatically generates a  URL of your article that is equal to your article title. In that case the generated URL may not be search engine friendly.

An Example of Post Slug : Consider an Article titled “ How to Use Google groups to Back up Your Emails from Gmail “. If you are not using the post Slug feature then your Generated URL would be :
/how-to-use-google-groups-to-back-up-your-emails-from-gmail

The above generated URL has 3 serious disadvantages :

1.Its lengthy and Without any purpose

2.Contains unnecessary words

3.Bad when used as Anchor texts as links In other Web locations Or emails etc.

So it becomes quite necessary to write better Post slugs for your Blog posts. Here i have listed some Good as well as some Bad practices regarding Post slugs in WordPress. These are all My proven experiences. Here we go :

5 Good Practices For Writing Post Slugs In WordPress

Here are some of the tips on writing better post slugs in wordpress :

1.Avoid Stop Words In Your post Slugs. Stop Words are the Commonly used words like “a” “to” “the” etc.They add No value in your URL’s from the SEO perspective. So in our above example a good post slug without any Stop Words Would be “/back-up-gmail-google-groups

2.Focus on Primary Keywords : When Writing your post slug always focus on your primary keywords.( In this example our primary keyword is gmail and backup.). So it becomes imperative to list them earlier than your Other Keywords.

3.Think of the Words Users Will Type in Search Engines : Try Using those keywords that Common people search for in Search engines to find your content.So a User is most likely to search for  “back up gmail” than “google groups method to back up gmail” .

4.The Fewer,The Better : The fewer keywords you use, the higher is their relative value.Do not let Your Unnecessary Keywords Dilute the value of Your Important ones.

To make it more clear suppose Google Search algorithm uses a Score of 10 on the URL of an article.(Just an example ) If you use 4 keywords then every word is assigned a score of 2.5 while if you use only 2 each word has a keyword score of  5.

5.Short URLS serve as better anchor texts : Shorter URL’s are preferable When your article is Placed on Forums or other Blog Posts . It looks neat and may be in some cases easier for Users to type and Refer.

6.Post Slugs may not be Equal to Post Titles : Its not a Rule that your post slug Must be Equal to your Article title. Earlier I used to think it that way . Wrong concept !

Before you Hit the Publish Button

As soon as you hit the publish button some actions are performed and you can’t stop them. For example :

1.Your Blog post is added to your feeds.So if you modify your Post slug after publishing your post it won’t make a difference.Anyone reading the feed from a Feed reader and clicking the Link will arrive at a 404 page (if you have one).

2.Pings are generated the Moment your post is published.Some Ping services will Visit your Blog almost Instantly while some may take some time (24-48 hours). Modifying the Post Slug after Publishing is thus to be avoided,

3.Do not start modifying your old post Slugs and try to optimize them now. They are already Indexed with the search engines.So if you change the post slug and Your Post appear in Search results guess what will happen ? The users Won’t be able to Find the content as you have changed the post Slug. It would be a Dead link.

4. As soon as you Publish a Post Your Trackback System starts working.It tries to send Trackbacks to posts Linked from your Blog Posts.Chances are that Your link Will appear in their trackbacks section or Comments panel.So if you Change the post slug after publishing all those Links Will be Dead Links.

Earlier I would Finish My post and Won’t pay any attention at all with the Post Slugs.It was generated automatically and I was happy enough for that.That was a Mistake.I hope you aren’t committing the same Mistake as I did.

Is there any Sort of warning that I can Use ?

Yes of course.Try this Greasemonkey script For Firefox that warns you if you haven’t manually  set up a Post slug before Publishing.So Before you Hit the publish Button always Change and optimize your Post slugs for Search engine optimization. Do you Use your Post Slugs Efficiently ?