In most cases your post’s URLs should mostly contain your focus keyphrase, this will make it obvious what your page is about from the link. You need to keep your permalinks short, descriptive, and clear, that is don’t put unnecessary words in it for the sake of it. Before you publish new posts and pages, you could also consider removing ‘function words’ from your permalink. These are words like ‘a, and, the’ when this is done carefully, it may make your permalinks easier to read, and easier to use or link to. Those posts with longer titles may benefit from this approach the most.
For those posts you will have already published, we will recommend a lot of care when changing permalinks. If other people have already linked to your pages or posts, changing URLs may cause a great mess. Even though WordPress will most times redirect users to the new location, Changing URLs may impact their performance.
Optimizing your page title
Each page title, the contents of your HTML <title>tag can be one of the essential factors of ranking top of search engines. It is not only the literal title tab of the tab or browser window but also the first line people see in search results. This explains what your page is, or is about, and acts as an advert that encourages users to click. On most websites, the default structure for posts and pages isn’t necessarily the most optimal approach for SEO. You will need to think of the structure of your titles, as well as the content of the title on each page. It is typically worth considering;
- Search engines may put more weight on early words- trying to get your keywords near the start of the title might make you more likely to rank well.
People scanning result pages see the early words first. If your keywords are at the start of your listing your page is more likely to get clicked on.
Image by Werner Moser from Pixabay