Permalink is a portmanteau made from permanent link. Wikipedia defines it as "a URL that points to a specific blog or forum entry after it has passed from the front page to the archives."  WordPress offers you different types of permalinks to choose from like :

• /year/month/date/post-name/
• /post-name/
• ?p=post-number
• /archives/post-number/

Also, you can create your own permalink structures too. Of all these, the first two mentioned above are the most widely used. Permalinks are one of the easily over-looked aspects when building a blog. They are important because, they are permanent links to your posts. You can’t change their structure later without losing your backlinks. Of course, you can set up 301 redirects. But, its beyond the knowledge of most bloggers.

Now coming back to the topic, which permalink structure to choose ? It comes down to the personal preference of the blogger. But, one must think twice before choosing, as it cannot be easily changed later. Almost 90% of the bloggers go for a permalink that has the post title in the URL. So, that has become a standard. But, a variety of opinion exists in whether to have the date in the URL or not. My personal choice is that I’d like to know when a post was made just by looking at the URL. I asked a few popular bloggers out there which structure they prefer. Check out their answers below :

Michael Martin uses /category/post-name/

Out of the two, I would probably go for /post-name/ now. (Simply because the long date isn’t necessary, and makes the URL look too complicated).

I’m using /category/post-name/ because when I set up the structure, I was thinking of categories as folders for the posts. One post went into one folder. It made sense, and showed the hierarchy of the site (domain/category/post).

If I was starting all over again though, I definitely wouldn’t be using /category/post-name/. The categories I set up originally were far too rigid, so I ended up with the majority of the posts being in 2 or 3 categories just. And now I don’t use categories at all because of that.

Garry Conn uses /post-name.php

I use the post-name.php for my permalink on my WordPress blogs. The reason I do that compared to /post-name/ is because a post is actually a file and not a sub directory on a server. I feel like it provides a very good balance in how I structure folders and files on my server (even though these are dynamic and don’t physically exist). Google and other search engines when they crawl my pages, they don’t know that my site is dynamic. They just see logical filing system I have created for my site.

Kevin Muldoon uses /yyyy/mm/dd/post-name/

If I am using WordPress for a static website then I tend to use /post-name/ as the site will not have any more than 50 posts. However, for blogs which I update frequently I usually use /yyyy/mm/dd/post-name/. Although /post-name/ may be slightly better from an SEO point of view, there is a chance you will start duplication post titles after a while (certainly after 1,000 posts). Also, I prefer to include the date in the post URL so that it is clear to readers when the article was posted.

Aibek uses /tag/post-name/

I think it depends on the type of blog. If it’s a news site, I’d go with /yyyy/mm/dd/post-name/. If it’s reviews/tips or anything that doesn’t really depend on time too much I’d go with 2nd one

Michael Castilla

I prefer to use /post-name/ as it’s simple, easy to remember, and cleaner. /yyyy/mm/dd/post-name/ is too complicated and has all the unnecessary junk!

Daniel Scocco uses /post-name/

/post-name/. Because it is shorter.

Now that you’ve read what they say, what is your personal choice of permalink structure ? Which one do you use now ? And, if you were starting over again, which one will you go for ? Share your opinions in the comments.

Google has slapped many giants with its latest Pagerank update. But, it has surely turned out good for me. If you had been to my blog yesterday or the day before, you would have noticed that i have added an About page. To be specific, the Pageranks of all the sites that i have mentioned there have increased (or remained the same. but have not decreased). GotChance has become a PR5 blog and i’m very much happy with that. The pagerank’s of my other sites have increased as below :

• Templora – Did not change. Remained 4
• Clever Tutorials – Previous 1 – Now 4
• Kontactr – From 0 to 5
• VidSav – From 0 to 2
• Nitrogen Designs – Remained 4
• My Blog Contests – From 0 to 1

Let me know how this Pagerank update has affected your blogs. I’m planning to sell some links (of course, with rel=”nofollow”).

Few days ago, David Airey‘s logo design blog was penalized by Google and suddenly his rankings dropped on Google for various search terms. He didn’t know what happened and why he was penalized. But, he knew what to do and how to reverse the penalty. Today, he reports that the penalty on his blog has been lifted. He explains in great detail what he did and how he got it reversed. So, i’m not going to go deep into that. Till this time, i was not taking Google Penalties seriously. But, after this Airey incident, i have learned a lot of things. I did a search on the topic and found many useful informations to avoid Penalties. Here’s how it affected his traffic :

Firstly, read the Google Webmaster Guidelines thoroughly. It clearly explains what to do and what not to do.

• Avoid hidden text or hidden links.
• Don’t use cloaking or sneaky redirects.
• Don’t send automated queries to Google.
• Don’t load pages with irrelevant keywords.
• Don’t create multiple pages, subdomains, or domains with substantially duplicate content.
• Don’t create pages that install viruses, trojans, or other badware.
• Avoid “doorway” pages created just for search engines, or other “cookie cutter” approaches such as affiliate programs with little or no original content.
• If your site participates in an affiliate program, make sure that your site adds value. Provide unique and relevant content that gives users a reason to visit your site first.

Always use rel=”nofollow” on all the paid links that you have on your website. Or you can redirect the link to an intermediate page that is blocked to the Search Engines by a robots.txt file. Incoming links are not a problem at all for Google. Because, the webmasters have no control over it. But, clearly the webmasters are responsible for the outgoing link. Linking to bad websites (bad neighborhood) can get you a potential ban. Here is a tool to check if you linking to “bad neighborhoods”. Here is an interesting question about linking to bad sites. John Chow has been severely penalized by Google for overdoing the “review for a linkback”. Not only he doesn’t rank on the first page on Google for “John Chow“, but also for “johnchow“.

After know about all these, i’m sure that i’ll be following a lot of SEO Techniques very soon. What do you all feel ? Have you been penalized by Google ? Share you experience in the comments.