Why using wordpress out of the box is a bad idea in terms of the post link it creates ?
By default WordPress slugs are ineffective in terms of SEO, forum links, and email links .If you take WordPress out-of-the-box, it doesn’t do anything to help you make your URLs more effective. WordPress just takes your post headline and sticks it as the post URL. You keep typing away headlines as looooooooooong as you want and WordPress just keeps nodding away with you. What you need to do is manually shorten it. If you don’t, WordPress just doesn’t care.
Here are two problems WordPress causes by putting post titles as post slugs:
- Long email links and forum links get broken.
- It isn’t Search Engine optimized.
Long post links get broken in emails and forums.
If you have sent some of your long WordPress blog post links to emails and forums, you will know exactly what I am talking about. Take this link for an example.
www.YourBlog.com/2/12/why-did-i-use-such-a-long-and-useless-URL-that-does-nothing-to-promote-my-products-in-google
If you mail this blog post to your readers, you will get complains saying that the link does not work. Even if the post really does exist, the URL will not be clickable in your reader’s mail program. The reason here is that the mail program actually breaks the link into two lines. The URL is too long for the email program. That is why it appears to be broken.
Not only in emails but long URLs also get broken in forums and a lot of other similar places. You talk in a forum about something with all your energy. You paste a link there to your blog post. After a while you notice that the link just doesn’t work. The long URL has again come back to you like instant karma for being lazy.
We now come to a more important problem.
Slugs are not automatically Search Engine Optimized.
Let’s say your slug contains Where should I go to buy vegetables in NewYork. Your main keywords or the keywords that you want a higher search engine rank for, are only buy, vegetables, and NewYork. Then what are the other words like “where should I go to” etc doing to your slug ?
Answer:
- it’s reducing the value of your main keywords
- it’s reducing the search engine rank of your important keywords.
Answer number 1.
Unnecessary words reduces the value of your main keywords in your url .
Your URL contains 9 keywords, out of which only 3 are popular. So you are diluting the value of the keywords “New York”, “buy” and “vegetables” by adding “where should I go to” You do not want to aim for a higher search engine ranking for words like “why”, “about”.
You want to aim for higher search engine ranking for words that really matter to your blog post like “New York”,”vegetables”, etc. It is only the main keywords that really matter in your search engines ranking. The lesson you learnt here is: Do not include unnecessary words into your slug.
Answer number 2.
Lower the value of your main keywords, lower your page will show in the search engine result for your important keywords.
This is simply a result of answer number 1.
So remember: After you write a great blog post ALWAYS edit its URL or the “slug” as WordPress likes to call it. Because as another wise man on the internet once said:
” Headlines Are For Humans, URLs Are For Robots “.
You can edit your post link in WordPress 2.5 by following this procedure.
- Go to Write >> Post
- Write a title in the title bar.
- Click on the contents textbox.
- A slug appears below you title bar.
- Click on the edit button next to the slug to edit your slug.
- Click on save after you edit the slug.
You can edit your post link in WordPress 2.3 by following this procedure.
- Go to Write >> Post.
- Open the post slug box.
- Type in your post slug in the textbox.
Thanks Pawan – I have posts arranged according to category and postname and they do come out as very long.The Post slug is not something I’ve been using so far. Useful tip!
Alex
Good read.
I used to experience the same problem, especially with the old versions of wordpress. broken links are really irritating and not everyone will take time to report a broken link.
Thats why I chose the the wise way to design a toolbar and have my readers have a better experience without storming their inbox with tons of emails and newsletters.
With a mikesnotice toolbar they are able to get my latest posts on their browser plus other features like weather forecast, streaming radio, 31 search engines, mikes notice community, plus other blogs and websites that i find useful.
great post
Thanks Pawan – that’s a great tip!
I was actually hoping that I was going to read that you came out with another one of your fantastic free plugins that automatically shortens the post slug and keeps only SEO relevant keywords
Guess what! Such plugin is ready to download from here.
for edit slug from write panel, I should change the permalink to custom/pretty permalinks first, right ?
Ya, you are right rivermaya. You must have permalinks enabled to take advantage of this tip.
Also, in wordpress 2.5 you won’t see the slug option at all if you have not yet set permalinks.
Never thought the slug was important, Pawan! THANKS for the tip!
Thank you for the good advice. For me as a fiction and fantasy writer and artist SEO is just a waste product and not my main concerne, but never the less very important.
Sincerely yours
BZ
Post Slug helps in defining the name for your post , apart from category.
if the post slug is blank , it takes up the post id as the URL
Thank you very much for kind advice. Already applied in practice.
Thanks so much Pawan, as a noob WP blogger, I have to shamefully admit, I had not yet worked out what the slug thingy was for LOL I will now be using it correctly..
Brilliant!!
Thanks
Sue
I usually edit the post slug so it’s shorter, but I never realized the benefits of taking everything out of the slug except the keywords! Brilliant! THIS is such valuable information, thank you!
Thanks Pawan,
I was always wondering how to do that. It’s amazing how easy it is to make the change. yet, if you don’t know how to do it, it can be the hardest thing to do. Thanks again. I appreciate you sharing this with us.
Peter
Well, to be honest, I think having it use the title by default is a GOOD thing. I mean, unless my titles are extremely long I WANT the url to contain all keywords used in the title.
So, I guess to me it looks like you might just be lashing out at the WP feature for the wrong purpose. Instead of talking about how the feature sucks, because it doesn’t, maybe an angle geared more towards the importance of using the slug feature to change it would have been appropriate, no?
Of course, your title did include a question mark…
Eric, I didn’t mean to say the way wordpress handles the post slug sucks. It is a good feature but it will fire back if you prefer to write long titles for your blog post. I’m just pointing out how it can be bad the way most users use.
If you take a look around most of the blog posts you will find many of them have super long urls. The problem is most users are either too lazy to edit their slug or don’t know the slug feature at all.
That’s the whole point of this blog post. To educate the bloggers how long titles are ruining their blog link and how they can shorten it and have it search engine optimized as a bonus.
Another great tip. I have a question regarding the plugins you use on your blog. How do you get those nice big social bookmarking icons at the bottom of every post?
Thanks,
Jenn
Jenn, it’s the same story like my banner plugin. I searched a lot for the plugin which can put those big social bookmarking buttons but unfortunately none was there. We had to code these ourselves to make it work here.
Two comments:
First, unless you’ve just published an article, it may not be worth going back and changing it’s slug since people will then click through on their feeds to a non-existent page.
Second, you can easily avoid the email issue by putting the URL in carots if you send in plain text. For example, http://this-is-a-long-url might break over two lines, but will usually be treated as one URL even if it does break over two lines by most email clients that were created in the past 10 or 12 years.
Nice tip, Blaine. Thanks for commenting.
Okay, that didn’t really work…in the paragraph above, I meant to say that:
<http://this-is-a-long-url> will usually be treated as one URL even if it does break over 2 lines…
Nice tip, really I like the new way 2.5 deals with such problem, but I have a word here, who does post a post with such title?!
, it’s too long. It looks bad in the sidebar for example, and it’s not easy to remember in some times 
.
Thanks for the tip
!
Bingorabbit, many bloggers post such long title (or similar) all the times. If you be alert about this then you’ll notice many such links floating around the internet.
I already knew this. Using a plugin to do this is just sheer laziness! If I know my post title is going to be a bit long, I just change the slug. Easy. I thought that was obvious?
I guess people don’t fiddle around with WordPress enough to figure it out. I do.
I use a plugin called HeadSpace2 by Jon over at Urban Giraffe – allows for mass viewing and editing of slugs and more.
I did figure this matters so its not a problem for me to adjust it. But when post about this. It make a sense that url that provide by wordpress is just automatic. Just I’m didn’t realise that what I’m doing is good for my blog actually…
the plugin you made is really useful. Thanks.
Great piece of advice about the post slug. One of those, “why didn’t I think of that?” moments. So simple but brilliant. Thanks for the plugin too!
Thanks for the great info. I’m new to WordPress and I was just wondering about this myself. You’ve just confirmed it for me. I’ll be more mindful of it in future.
Thanks for tis article, I was wondering about this while setting up my personal blog. Thanks guys for sharing the link for the plugin.
Cheers
Hmmm, you’ve made a good point! It’s just convenient having wordpress automatically post slugs based on article titles.
I guess it’s a give and take!
Hi,
Thanks for the nice tip, as a newbie I didn’t realise
how useful it is.
I went to check it out in my blog but unfortunately
I couldn’t find where to edit the slug on my WP 2.6.
Tried to look for the image above but no go too…
Advice please, thanks!
Hey! Is there a way to automatically filter out certain unnecessary words from the slug so that it won’t be put in there in the first place?
I wonder if there is any place where one could see just how many “make money online” and “make money blogging” sites and posts people are doing these days. It seems to have unfortunately become a fad. All of us may one day need to look for a new and more specialized niche! MaxBlogPress…you definitely have a great niche within that niche – thanks for all you do, how much easier you’ve made things, and you had the vision to see this need and the need for a specialized niche that also benefits you – a great example of online entrepreneurial spirit!