When you write a post in WordPress (and other blogging platforms) the software generates a link based on the title of your post. The part of your link after the “template” is called the “page slug.”
Templates? Slugs? What?
A permalink structure is essentially a template, or a set way of making something on your site. For instance, on this blog, our template is /year/month/postname. The previous post on 3 Types of SEO Backlinks, has this as its permanent URL:
http://www.highonseo.com/2012/08/backlinks-mentions-citations-listings/
You’ve seen thousands of links and probably dissected some so you may understand what this means. Let’s take this one apart.
http:// This tells the browser the type of document you’re looking for. You may not use otherprotocols (ftp://) but they exist.
www.highonseo.com This is the domain – you know this.
/2012/08/ This is the permalink structure. It’s based on a template in your WordPress Settings > Permalinks.
backlinks-mentions-citations-listings This is the page slug for the post. It identifies an individual post.
How Are Slugs Created?
WordPress will create your slug by using the post title. For instance, the title of this post is:
Page slugs, Permalinks, and Page Titles
And the default slug is:
page-slugs-permalinks-and-page-titles
Matchy-matchy, right? This is how slugs are created.
So You Can Control Your Slugs and Permalinks?
For SEO purposes, having the default page slug may not always be best. For instance, you notice the default slug above contains the word “and” which is a waste of space as far as Google is concerned. Also, we’ve been using the word “slug” in this post, not “page slug” so that is also somewhat wasted space.
Now, look in the address bar for this post. You can see we’ve changed the slug from:
page-slugs-permalinks-and-page-titles
to
page-slugs-permalinks-titles
We haven’t been giving you information, we’re teaching you. Do you understand why we’ve changed the slug? Google has operating costs. One of those costs is based on how many characters they store in their many databases. Longer slugs would also allow the potential for more spam (think buy-cheap-viagra-while-gambling-at-casino-games-spam-spam-spam). Short, accurate slugs are helpful when targeting keywords as well. If your keywords are 25% of the slug (1 word in 4) that’s more powerful than if they’re 16% of the slug (1 in 6).
Should You Change Slugs or Leave Defaults?
The answers seem to be: change it if you know why and how. Leave it if you still don’t understand it. It does matter but it’s not absolutely necessary. If you change the slug to be completely unrelated to your post that is a problem. Google wants your slug to match your content so don’t try to change every slug to syracuse-wedding-photographer-1, syracuse-wedding-photographer-2, cny-wedding-photography14. It will get your site into deep, deep trouble.
Change slugs to save space, better match your keywords and focus your keywords. Don’t change them to create spam. Remember: Google is always working to eliminate spam. If you’re spam, you’re on the “to be eliminated” list.
