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Friday, February 20, 2009

How to Create Search Engine Friendly Permalinks for Blogger Posts

What are Permalinks?
Permalinks are the permanent links to a post page. Blogger automatically generates a permalink based on the title of your post. Permalinks provide information to the viewer about the kind of content being pointed to.

Permalinks create permanent links to your Blogger posts which are indexed by search engines such as Google. Search engines use permalinks to categorise posts. Browsers use permalinks to help navigate to your posts. When you hover over a permalink in your browser you can read the post name in the status bar.

The permalink for this article is:

http://blogknowhow.blogspot.com/2009/02/improved-permalinks-for-blogger-posts


Permalink View in Browser

Tips for Working With Permalinks in Blogger
While other blogging software such as Wordpress allows the user to edit permalinks Blogger has no such feature. For this reason care needs to be taken when creating titles for your posts as the permalink generated from the title can't be changed later. While your article is in draft form you can continue to change the title as many times as you like. However, once the permalink is assigned at the point that the post is published it remains the same no matter how many times you change the title of your post.

Another issue with Blogger is that it takes only the first 35-40 characters of your title to create the permalink so if you have a longer title you can run into problems. My suggestion is that you design your titles carefully if you want to avoid losing the end characters from your permalink. For instance a long title such as the one below would result in a shortened permalink which would lose the important fact that this post is related to working with Blogger:

http://blogknowhow.blogspot.com/2009/01/how-to-create-user-friendly-permalinks-for-blogger-posts

Fortunately there is a way around this problem. You will need to publish and then republish as I did with this post. The method involves creating a shorter title that will adequately summarise the content of your post (eg Improved Permalinks for Blogger Posts) and then publishing your post. Now go back and change the title to the one you prefer. In this case I changed the title to "How to Create User Friendly Permalinks For Your Blogger Posts." Now your title can be as long as you like. As you can see mine is longer than 40 characters. The permalink, however has remained the same even though the title has changed.

You can use this trick to create eye catching and memorable titles. It will also ensure that the permalink reflects a concise title and that unnecessary details in the permalink are removed. Creating concise permalinks is important for Search Engine Optimisation. Read more about Search Engine Optimisation in the blog tutorial Tips for Search Engline Optimisation.

Related Articles
List of Blog Know How Tutorials for Blogger Blogs
Adjust Blogger Title Tags for Improved SEO

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37 comments:

Anonymous said...

This article explained me a lot. No why links not changing. Good for me no.

Prem said...

it was good.
especially the comparison with wordpress

The Whizz said...

Thanks for taking the time to post feedback about managing permalinks in Blogger. When I am surfing the net I am always struck by how many lost opportunites there for better SEO because Blogger users do not know how to work effectively with the limitations of Blogger permalinks

Marky said...

thanks for this. I will start doing this now. :)

The Whizz said...

Great Marky! Hopefully you will notice an increase in traffic as visitors find your articles more easily.

Anonymous said...

Good Info
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The Whizz said...

Thanks new bookland. Hope you will join us

Chynnaheart said...

THIS ARTICLE IS VERY HELPFUL THANK YOU SO MUCHHHHHHHHHH!

LOOK AT MY BLOG ITS A MESS

Chynnaheart said...

its really hard for me to understand sometimes im a complete noob with html..im from philippines...is it like when you save something and publish it then that post will be like a file that is locked forever?its like the html file is stick to the server although u can still rename and edit it but the file html cannot be change.sorry im a complete noob with this one....
i hope i got this idea..anyway thank u for this blog.Now i should be more careful in posting..

Anyway my first permalink is titled as "_______blogspot.com/weeee.html" .see..Never thought that it would be permanent forever. because that is my first time to post..just testing it....now i have to delete it..

Chynnaheart said...

did u just change the title to this??

How to Create User Friendly Permalinks For Your Blogger Posts

to

How to Create Search Engine Friendly Permalinks for Blogger Posts

The Whizz said...

Chynnaheart you've got it in one. The post name can be changed as many times as you like but the URL link name stays the same no matter how many times you change the title. It is important to get this right early because once you have comments on your blog and it is listed in search engines you wont want to be deleting articles. Hope you will continue to read along. Good luck!

Unknown said...

I thought a post is not changeable once posted. How does one change the title?

The Whizz said...

Hi Mark A Cohen. To change the title just click edit post or the quick pencil and change the title of your post to whatever you want. You can change every word if need be but the original permalink created will stay the same regardless

pixelshots said...

am now getting ma bulb glowing on problems with ma titles... thanx frnd..

The Whizz said...

Thanks PixelShots. Great photo blog by the way. Congrats

Anonymous said...

Hi, thanks for this useful post but is there no way to change the permalink of old blogger posts.

The Whizz said...

Hi Adam. There is no way that I know of to change permalinks once they are created. One thing you could do is republish the article with the same date and the permalink that you want. Deleting the old article of course to avoid duplication. However all comments would be lost along with any links from other sites to the article. Also it will affect search engine results. However if your blog is relatively new and you don't have too many links it may be worthwhile to do this. I guess you have to weigh up the advantages and the disadvantages. Having said that though if the keyword density in your article is good and you are making good use of tags chances are you can still achieve good results in search engines without good permalinks. Take a look at my article: Make Money with Adsense Keywords and Blogger. Good luck!

Jeny Jose said...

Thanks Buddy. It is helpful. Next time I will choose the permalink wisely.

Terence said...

a wonderful blog. scores 100% my friend. though i am doubtful if these work perfectly on my blog, which is written in traditional chinese, but really thanks to your effort and "course 101"-alike tutorials to idiots like me!

Elena said...

This is a great tip for me as i like to put a quote into my title http://novovisionbyelena.blogspot.com/
Thanks again!

Anonymous said...

Great blog. I enjoy using blogger, but thought blogspot was terrible as far as SEO.. Thanks for all your tips that will come in handy and I look forward to reading many more of your posts.

Kurt (OrionMystery) said...

Wow, this is a brilliant tip. Thank you so much!

guitar custom order said...

verry good, thanks

yatra said...

really a great post.will appreciate it.

lizbeth.pereira@gmail.com said...

Hi Wizz, You've helped me beyond description. Lots of good karma coming your way. Thanks!

jon_franklin said...

I shall start doing this for my blog now. Thanks for the tip!
Average Android

Anonymous said...

Excellent information! Will sure use this from now on on my blogs.

john said...

its nice artical.i found it informative & helpful.thanx for sharing these info.

Anonymous said...

This is really helpful. Thank you.

Anonymous said...

GR8..THnx..!

Unknown said...

really good information. thanks for sharing. i will use these tricks on my website http://www.ravisaive.in

J Kumar said...

thanks for the great tutorial!

http;//www.dimme.co.cc

yoetama said...

I was thinking blogspot could be like in terms of wp permalink

Anonymous said...

Thanks for this info. I didn't know how to create the shorter permalinks so this has helped me.

Unknown said...

good

Muhammad Shoaib said...

very nice post about permalinks for seo

Jan-Jan Defante said...

Cool! I'm surely gonna try this trick about permalinks in my blog, thank you!

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