Slugging on,……..

eClaires

Your post at least gives me some insight into the potential power of slugs – thank you! There is surprisingly very little out there about slugs and their use.

I think Dave may be right – only testing will tell if it matters how I configure them.

Steve

As for who’s correct, Daniel or, uh, Daniel… I’m going to throw some fuel on this and say: Without testing, it’s simply opinion.

In any case, thanks again for the article and hosting the conversation. I definitely learned something.

Darn if you’re not right! Very important post of yours. That’s so unobvious of WP! Everything else is checked by default, except that, and you’d never know there is such a thing and where to find it.

The default post slug seems to be the post name (with hyphens between words). I am using post #s for my URLs (ex. /?p=503) and not permalinks with words. I’ve now modified the slug and the URL is still my post #, not the slug, so we’re ready for Daniel’s excellent advice about focusing on key words to work.

@Jane H: In fact I also looked for this “post slug” options 🙂
But in WP 2.7, it is hidden by default, so you must first click on “screen options” (top screen), then a menu scroll down and then you can select it.
Be careful that it will display the field at the bottom of the page.

Now honestly I don’t really see the difference between “post slug” and “permalink” (?) When u change one, the other changes too (!)
So I prefer to modify the permalink by editing it. Handier as just located under the main title on top of page…

Chris

@ bmunch, yes I think one will have to watch out of slug clashing. When you let WordPress handle it, you have nothing to worry about, but when you go and edit each slug, you might find yourself using a slug you used a while ago and forgot about.

Like anything, using this effectively will take some good self-management. 🙂

Thanks for pointing that out.

I’m going to use the heck out of that! That is amazingly useful… especially when my titles tend to be so long and the urls can get really messy. Thanks a million!

1. The more keywords you have in the URL, the smaller the relative value of each of one. Suppose Google places an algorithmic value of 10 on the URL factor of each site (just an example). If you have 10 keywords there, each of them will receive a value of 1. If you have 2 keywords, each of them will receive a 5.

2. I never talked about using the post slug to make URLs more user friendly. My purpose of making them shorter is not to make it easier for users to type (which I know happens rarely) but rather to increase the value of the important keywords while removing the non essential stuff from the URL.

3. When I say optimized here I am also referring to search engine optimization. However, that does not mean keywords research and going after them, exclusively. When you improve a small detail of your URLs which will bring more search engine traffic for one specific post, you are search engine optimizing that post.

That is why the post slug if useful, and useful to make your posts more search engine friendly. Even if changing your URL with the post slug would improve your organic traffic by only 1%, add that up for hundreds of posts and you can see that over the time this would have a strong effect on the amount of traffic you get from search engines.

1. Do more keywords in your URL really dilute the value of the keywords, or do they provide more description for search engines.

2. I agree that the headline of my post on payment services is very long and probably not very user-friendly. But how often do users type in the URL directly? Am I really going to get more hits if I use less words in the headline?

3. When you use the word “optimize,” I think of search engine optimizing a website, or more specifically, going after a certain keyword phrase. The wordpress slug option wouldn’t really help with this in my opinion. For example, if you do a bunch of keyword research on WordTracker and find a long tail keyword that you want to pursue, i.e. “wedding planning checklist,” you will want to include that specific phrase in your URL, page title, article headlines, and dispursed throughout the body copy. If you use this strategy, you will find that you won’t need to use the slug plugin in the first place!

However, it is always nice to know what WordPress slug means and it’s good that you pointed it out for everyone. Thanks.

One of your posts is titled: Paypal, Google Checkout, AmazonWhich Payment Service Should You Use?

The URL for that post is: /paypal-google-checkout-amazonwhich-payment-service-should-i-use/

The keywords paypal, googlecheckout and amazon are popular. The others are not.

Your URL contains 10 keywords, out of which only 3 are popular. You are diluting the value of the keywords “paypal”, “google checkout” and “amazon” by adding “which payment service you should use”.

If you used the post slug featured to make this URL like: /paypal-google-checkout-amazon/ (provided you also have backlinks and other SEO factors in place) you would receive more organic traffic for these keywords on that post.

So basically your URL is not optimized for the most popular keywords on that post.

Clear?

Hopefully you aren’t going after the keyword phrase “43 Fantastic WordPress Themes.”

Keyword optimizing requires research to find out popular search keywords with low competition. I never said 43 is a popular search term.

This is because the first impression matters the most. When you see a result in Google, let’s say, you see the title, the description and the URL address. Based on these factors you make a decision: should I or shouldn’t I visit this blog? So, help your readers decide.

I have been optimizing my post slugs since my first article.

When you are keyword optimizing a post or your website, you want your URLs, page titles, headlines, and body copy to feature a specific keyword phrase. If you notice in Google when you type in my company for example, “bizwidgets” you will notice Google bolds the keyword in the URL, page title, and body copy.

I was just trying to suggest a tip that if you are keyword optimizing something, your URL, page title, headline, and body copy should all include one keyword phrase, for example “blog tips”

I do like short URLs whenever possible! (when you aren’t keyword optimizing)

It also depends on the URL structure you use, for instance having dates there would solve this problem.

Sorry got to go try this out on my blog.

Nick

e.g. a series of related post you are writing or a recurring theme post.

As far as the URL goes, the fewer and more focused keywords you have there, the better.

Suppose your post is titled “37 Fantastic Tips for Web Marketing.”

Including the words “37, fantastic and for on the URL would be useless since very few people would search for them. Secondly, it might also be counter productive since these words will dilute the value of the keywords.

Also, I’m told that WordPress now automatically includes a function to redirect a post if you change the slug, even after it’s published. If that’s not true, you can try the Redirection plugin by Urban Giraffe (under Manage — Redirection — Options, you can check a box to have it automatically issue a 301 redirect when you change a post slug; it can also take care of URL canonicalization and other redirect issues without playing with .htaccess).

I generally like to leave it matching the post title in case someone remembers the title, but is having a hard time finding the post. If they’ve been to my blog enough they can probably figure out the URL. I doubt it happens that often, but it’s been my rationale for letting the post slug match the post title.

It’s still nice to be able to change the post slug when you want.

Wow, Now The longer urls can be well managed! And if used wisely we can just create a good amount of curiousness and get people to visit the post! Good one! 🙂

I didn’t even know what that was for. I love WordPress.

Now I can stop writing goofy headlines and use that post slug thingee.

Thanks for the great tips,
Paula