Before I start my explanation of permalinks, I want to show you two examples so you can refer to them as necessary:
An example of a blog’s main URL (which shows all the posts for a given period of time:
https://www.bloggingbasics101.comAn example of a permalink:
https://www.bloggingbasics101.com/what-is-a-permalink/
A permalink is the link to an individual blog post. These are important because if you ever need to link to an exact blog entry (e.g., as part of a carnival), you use the permalink as your link. It’s poor blog etiquette not to use the permalink.
If you don’t use the permalink, you’ll just be linking to your main blog page. The problem with that is that, as you post new blog entries, the newest entry appears at the top of your main blog page and the other entries are pushed down on the page.
The entry your readers are looking for may be down at the bottom of the page or already in the archives; your reader has no idea where to find the entry! If they click over to your site expecting to see a specific post related to a carnival and they see a different post, they may not take the time to find the “real” post they’re looking for.
You can find the permalink link under any blog entry. However, not all blog hosts/designs handle permalinks the same way.
- Typepad blogs: There’s a link that actually says Permalink under the entry.
- Blogger: The link varies. It’s usually the time stamp of the post or the actual post title.
- Other blogs have other links; many times the permalink is the title of a given post.
One way to figure out which link is the permalink of a post (if it’s not obvious) is to put your curser over each link under or above a post. As you hover over a link a little box should come up that says permalink. If it doesn’t, that link probably isn’t your permalink and you should move on to the next link.
Once you find the permalink, click on it and you’ll be taken to a page with just that blog entry on it. Snazzy, huh? Now, to link to that page you just need to copy the URL in the address bar and use it where ever you were inserting your link (e.g., a Mr. Linky or a blog contest).
The easier way
As you might have noticed, I’ve been suggesting people to use WordPress. You probably already know that you can build a blog or make a website with it. In case you are planning to start a blog/website with WordPress (or you already have), then just log in to your WordPress dashboard and look for:
Settings -> Permalinks and use “Post name” – this should be the most user and search engine friendly way of dealing with permalinks. See the picture below:
This post has been updated March 15, 2022.
Thanks so much its very useful about related issues.
Thanks for posting. Learned something new today.
I understand the power of blogging and always try to collect information how i can improve my blog quality. First time there i am listen about the permalink link it’s really great.
Thanks a lot for your wonderful post. Personally I’m writing an article about on page SEO and talk about the permalink topic. I will definitely introduce this post as well as your blog to my readers. Thanks again. 🙂
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Great explaination of permalinks, but doesn’t explain why on an entry I wrote on our WordPress blog site, the word ‘PERMALINK’..yup, in capitals, comes up as a header. It’s driving me mad – I have no idea how to get rid of it.
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Good information about permalinks, thanks for sharing.
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Hello! I just found out that my website is hosted on a Windows Server and that they cannot have permalinks on a Windows server. I am trying to work on my SEO and I would like to know if it is crucual for me to change servers or if I can stay with my windows server and still succeed with SEO. Thanks
Ake,
Having the word “permalink” in your actual permalink will only help you if you’re trying to rank in search engine placement for that word. If that’s not your intent, then there’s no reason to include it. However, it IS important to have “pretty permalinks.” Pretty permalinks look like the one I mention in the article (e.g., https://www.bloggingbasics101.com/what-is-a-permalink) and include the keywords you’re trying to rank for. Sometimes a blog platform (WordPress included) defaults to permalinks that look like this: https://www.bloggingbasics101.com/p?=308 (or something similar). See the difference? The latter example doesn’t have anything for search engines to use to index your article as relevant to search terms. The former example that uses the article title as the permalink includes the keywords I used in the article title. Now when search spiders crawl my site, they can use my permalink to recognize that this article is relevant to searches about my included keywords.
Hope that helps!
Melanie
It’s very helpful information. Thanks Melanie Nelson for providing these information.
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Thanks for this posting Melanie, very useful. Now, an additional point you may be able to help with is does writing “permalink” in a link make a difference to the search engines? I saw a blog posting once that actually mentioned “permalink:blogpostingpage.php”
Thanks,
ake
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Great info, thanks. I am now going to (try) to put it to work as I learn to use pinterest to pin my own blog posts.
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Thanks for the explanation once again, just in case my other entry didn’t post.
Thanks for the explanation. I was confused about this even though I seem to see permalinks all over the place. Thanks again.
Thank you for the good discussion of permalinks!
Thanks for the explanation on permalinks. Until now, I had never used them but from now will ALWAYS use them. Many thanks!
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Thanks for the explanation about permalinks.
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