Having a well thought-out structure and permalink settings for your WordPress site is absolutely critical. It’s the foundation of your website and the better your foundation, the stronger your website.
So how exactly does having proper WordPress site structure & permalinks help?
- It ensures that your website is organised in a logical fashion, so that visitors and search engines (like Google) can quickly/easily understand what your site is about and the topics it covers.
- Other things being equal, it increases the chances of your website showing-up on the first page of Google. And we all know that is priceless.
And how do you optimise your WordPress site structure & permalinks ?
Good question 
.
Here’s how I go about the process now:
Let’s say I have a resume writing service in Singapore (which I do actually ) and I want to build a website to sell my services. I already have a name for my company (hmmm…how about First Impressions) and registered the domain name - www.firstimpressions.com.
) and I want to build a website to sell my services. I already have a name for my company (hmmm…how about First Impressions) and registered the domain name - www.firstimpressions.com.I do some great keyword research and arrive at the following keywords that people are using to search for resume related stuff in Singapore.
- Resume Singapore
- Resume Writing Services Singapore
- Resume Writers Singapore
- Singapore Resume Samples
- Singapore Resume Templates
Next, I need to organise my pages and posts, to incorporate all of these keywords in some way. So I think long and hard about the different options and decide on this for my Pages.
- Main/Parent page for my services: www.firstimpressions.com/resume-singapore/. This will include an overview of why it is important to have a good resume when looking for jobs in Singapore.
- Sub-pages of the main page:
- Our Approach & Pricing: www.firstimpressions.com/resume-singapore/resume-writing-services-singapore/. This page will have details of our resume writing process and pricing.
- Our Writers: www.firstimpressions.com/resume-singapore/resume-writers-singapore/. Here I’ll put background information on our resume writers.
- About Us Page: www.firstimpressions.com/resume-writers-singapore/. A page for background information on the company in general.
- Contact Us Page: www.firstimpressions.com/contact-resume-singapore/.
And here is what I do for my Posts.
- Categories: I keep two categories.
- Singapore Resume Samples: www.firstimpressions.com/singapore-resume-samples/. I can then add articles which have samples for different occupations, such as www.firstimpressions.com/singapore-resume-samples/banker/ www.firstimpressions.com/singapore-resume-samples/teacher/ www.firstimpressions.com/singapore-resume-samples/consultant/
- Singapore Resume Templates: www.firstimpressions.com/singapore-resume-templates/. Similar to the samples, here I’ll add templates for different occupations.
- Permalinks/URLs: For the post URLs to appear like what I’ve shown above, I need to make some changes in my WordPress settings. So in the admin panel I click on Settings and then Permalinks, which take me to the page shown below. As you can see the default setting is to have post permalinks/Urls as http://www.yourwebsite.com/?p=123. What this means is that the first post published will have the URL www.firstimpressions.com/?p1, the second would be www.firstimpressions.com/?p2 and so on. So I select the Custom Structure option and enter this - /%category%/%postname%/ – in order to have the permalinks appear the way I want them to. If my category names were very wordy, then to avoid too long a URL, I might have chosen just /%postname%/.
With this structure for my WordPress site and permalinks, I have divided my website into clear sections, which make it easier for users and Google to navigate/understand. And seeing my keywords in all my URLs makes Google think – “You know what, this website is really focussed on resume writing in Singapore. Why don’t I show them on the first page for resume related things in Singapore.”
This way of structuring a website pleases me personally as well . I love being neat, organised and having a proper place for everything. I feel uneasy every time I go to one of my earlier websites, which don’t have a great structure. It just doesn’t feel right.
. I love being neat, organised and having a proper place for everything. I feel uneasy every time I go to one of my earlier websites, which don’t have a great structure. It just doesn’t feel right.And on that note, let me show you how I structured websites 4 years back. Well at that time I used to hire web designers to set up sites for me. And here’s what one actually did for my resume writing website (I’m continuing to use First Impressions but that’s not what my site was called):
- Main/Parent page for my services: www.firstimpressions.com/svs/.
- Our Approach & Pricing: www.firstimpressions.com/prices/.
- Our Writers: www.firstimpressions.com/writers/.
- About Us Page: www.firstimpressions.com/about/.
- Contact Us Page: www.firstimpressions.com/contact/.
- Categories: 1) Articles 2) Videos.
- Posts: Default WordPress permalinks settings.
I know, I know. Disaster right?
