Have you met this cute little box in your WordPress write post/page screen? It’s a simple little box really and sometimes, when collapsed it’s easy to pass up.

But it holds a very special value and it’s one that should not be overlooked when you’re working to create the next best blog in the world (or not and just want your blog to be seen).

When you’re using a permalink structure that displays the name of your post in the URL, it’s post slug that’ll work best for you.

(And just for the record, the default permalink structure that WordPress uses is not best for SEO).

There are two permalink structures that I prefer:

http://www.imbloggingthat.com/2007/12/22/sample-post/

You’ll see in this permalink structure, the URL for your blog post or page displays your URL, the year, the month, the date, and post name.

http://www.imbloggingthat.com/2007/12/sample-post/

In this permalink structure your URL, year, month, and post name are displayed.

As a matter of personal opinion, for SEO purposes your blog post or page URL should always display the page/post title or a portion thereof. This can also be done but creating a custom permalink structure that works best for you.

And here is where post slug will help you.

If the name of your blog post, for example is: The Best Plugins for WordPress the URL output using the first permalink structure example will show the following URL for this post:

http://www.imbloggingthat.com/2007/12/23/the-best-plugins-for-wordpress

Now, when Google crawls your site you’ll have the chance at being indexed when someone searches “the best plugins for wordpress” or “plugins for wordpress.”

Knowing that the default output for this post will read as above, the post slug will give you the opportunity to change what the URL output is for any post.

So instead of having the-best-plugins-for-wordpress, perhaps you’d like plugins-for-wordpress or wordpress-plugins, all very keyword rich.

By typing in this post slug box “wordpress-plugins,” you’re changing the default permalink structure for this post.

Another example, my most memorable page’s URL is http://www.imbloggingthat.com/memorable/ but the title on this page is actually Most Memorable. By using post slug I was able to change what the URL output is by default. For this page, it should have been http://www.imbloggingthat.com/most-memorable/.

So, why is this important?

I’m sure that you’ve heard over and over about “organic search traffic” and this simply means that someone went to Google (or any search engine), typed in a phrase and poof… there you were! That is organic traffic.

You weren’t linked to, you weren’t found on a blogroll… a simple search term or phrase brought the visitor to your site.

To get your search keywords you can use meta tags, you can use headers, and you can use permalink structures (along with many, many other things).

So, knowing that search engines are looking at your titles and page URL’s, it’s important to remember structure and title names when you’re building your blog.

It’s just a thought…

By the way, if you’re using the default permalink structure in WordPress:

http://www.imbloggingthat.com/?p=123

This can be changed. And the truth is, if you change your permalink structure if someone visits an old URL, by default WordPress will redirect to the correct URL and still display your page.

The catch… if you have any pages (other than your index) that have PageRank, by changing your permalink structure you WILL lose that PageRank (because you’ve changed the URL of that page).

So remember, next post you write, that post slug is important and is the follow-up to how you title those posts. Keep in mind what you want that URL to read and you’ll get a better handle on how to title and use post slug.

Technorati Tags: WordPress, Permalinks, Permalink Structure, Post Slug, URL, PageRank, Search Engines, Posts, Blogging, Default, Google, WordPress Tutorial, Organic Traffic

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