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This is the second in my series of making your blog search engine friendly.
The best way to do this is in your Dashboard > Options > Permalinks. Change the default to custom and enter “/%postname%/” and click on ‘Update Permalink Structure’. Make sure your .htaccess file located in the root directory is writeable. However, if you have been using your current permalink structure for quite some time, Google may have indexed your blog using that structure so if you change it, (search engine) visitors may get a 404 Page Not Found error.
This can be easily fixed by using the Permalink Redirect plugin. After activation, enter your old permalink structure in its options page. This will issue a 301 redirect to your current page. In plain English, visitors clicking on the old URL structure will now be redirected to the new one. This will also transfer the Google juice of your old URL to your new one.
Update: Note that the permalink structure that I use is not necessarily SEO-friendly as compared to other that has categories and dates in them, as pointed out by Venu and Chetan in the comments. But I recommend at least changing them from the default ID structure.
Next, I’ll be writing on the importance of robots.txt file and a sitemap for your blog. Stay tuned.
by Patrix | on Friday, June 15th, 2007 at 10:26 am | 
Technology, Weblogs, World Wide Web . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.
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June 15th, 2007 at 2:04 pm reply
Intersting !! But I really want to know if i makes a big impact on SEO. Anway the URL looks much simpler this way.
June 15th, 2007 at 2:56 pm reply
Venu, definitely the emphasis here is to simplify the URL and keep out redundant information. Unless you want your posts to be identified with date or category, it is wise to keep them out of the URL. Regarding the SEO angle, I’ll elaborate on that in my next post.
June 16th, 2007 at 2:48 pm reply
Shortened URLs are better optimized for search—like by curtailing year, month or day or references to category or archives? That’s news to me.
I did this a while ago, but for altogether different reasons—to easily type out my own permalink and because I wanted my permalinks to be friendly to *me*. Human first, machine next. Google’s Webmaster Guidelines conveys this simply: Make pages for users, not for search engines.
I, for one, honestly believe that.
I think you’re misleading people reading this blog into thinking that URL shortening would somehow make their posts better optimized for search, better ranked than those longer URLs. The only thing that matters is that a URL must conform to a correct html syntax and should preferably not have dynamic query characters (see a simple explanation in the Google Webmaster Guidelines).
Most of what you’ve said here or in your previous post is not optimization, but your own personal preference. They make no difference to how your content is visible to the bots.
And let’s kill this one for good:
I write for myself and I have a reason why. But instead of a reply, let me quote someone for a change:
It looks like you’re looking to your blog advertising revenue for some serious living off it. Or else, you wouldn’t be so robotic or animated to go the extent you’re trying to. Are you?
June 16th, 2007 at 3:20 pm reply
My very sincere apologies for saying this, I think I have been a complete *sshole saying this, without meaning it—please remove the above quote if you can from my previous reply.
It is very personal and I shouldn’t have. I’m so sorry—I have a tendency to rub people the wrong way, I don’t want you to be the next victim. [I don't know what I was thinking.]
June 16th, 2007 at 4:21 pm reply
Chetan, As I mentioned in my introductory post for this series I am no expert and I am simply sharing the changes I did on my blog. Some bloggers were interested in making similar changes and instead of doing it via email, I thought I would put my thoughts for all to see. If I sense most of other readers are not interested in this stuff, I will discontinue my series and carry on with the email conversations.
I don’t pretend to be a web expert and may be wrong and hence the comments section is open to correcting me. I’ve no qualms in admitting my mistakes if I am wrong. Regarding the permalink structure, as I mentioned to Venu it is kinda related to the robots.txt disallow exception that I intended to write about next. But you’re right and it doesn’t directly impact SEO. My emphasis was on changing it from the default WP structure that has no date, category, or post name and hence less SEO-friendly. Usually I don’t care about explaining myself about what I chose to write on my blog but I respect you for your blogging and design experience so am doing so.
Regarding your second comment, I appreciate it and no personal offense taken. However, it does hurt to hear that from a person that I look up to especially because what you accuse me of isn’t true. I’ll leave your first comment unedited since you have added the second one.