Wordpress Blogs once Installed using Fantastico option are loaded with default general settings which you need to tweak in to get your blog rank better in the search engines. Customizing the Permalinks is one of the most important factor for your blog to rank well in the top. The reason for this is that search engines find it hard to understand and index website URL which are filled with some random characters like session id’s etc.

Click on the Permalinks Section in your wp-admin which would be available at http://www.yourblog.com/wp-admin/options-permalink.php and here you will be able to tweak into the permalinks and change them. By default the settings would be like http://www.indianproblogger.com/?p=123 which you need to change. Select the second option ‘Day and name’ if you want a permalinks structure like ‘http://www.indianproblogger.com/2008/06/19/sample-post/’ but i would prefer you to remove the date section from the URL because it would just make the URL longer without forming any real use. It comes in use if you are developing a news kind of website using wordpress because that way the readers can find the post’s date easily from the date structure in the post’s URL. In order to keep just the ‘name’ of the post in the URL select ‘Custom Structure’ and add ‘/%postname%/’ under it. This way the Blog Post’s would be like ‘http://www.indianproblogger.com/sample-post/’ which are the most recommend url structure.

Once you complete the ‘Common settings’ customization under ‘Permalinks Structure’ the next option is to select a ‘Category base’ and ‘Tags base’. Generally most wordpress blogs has a structure for categories like ‘http://www.indianproblogger.com/category/blogging’ and this can also create a duplicate URL structure and does not help in the search engines factor, if you have a established blog there is no point in changing your URL structure but if you are starting a fresh new blog its recommend to use a ‘Category Base’ which is relevant to the niche of your blog like if its a Travel Blog use something like /guide (or) /travel etc. If you are going to start a career related blog it would be recommended to use a category base like /career etc.

Its not recommended to make any changes to the ‘Tags Base’. You should also note that when you already have a option to categorize your posts in the blog, there is no need to use the Tags structure because it just creates some extra duplicate content pages and would devalue the inner link building value. Decide from the Day#1 itself which format you are going to use ie Categories (or) Tags and go with only 1. Once you try to click on ‘Save Changes’ the wordpress script will ask you to add ‘Writable’ permissions to your .htaccess file. For this you need to first open ‘Notepad’ and save the blank ‘Notepad’ file as “*.htaccess” and upload it to your root section of your web hosting account where the wordpress is installed. Once the file is uploaded you need to Right-Click on it and select Properties/CHMOD option to change the permissions.

Change the Permissions to ‘666′ and click on Apply to save the changes and after this all the changes made from the wp-admin panel in the Permalinks section would be automatically updated. Click on Save Changes in the Permalinks section and your customization completes here.

If you have any problems in setting up Permalinks (or) if you are looking for help in what kind of URL Structure you should select, feel free to ask your doubts using the comments section below. This ends our Wordpress Permalinks Setup Guide.

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