Permalink SEO Individual Post URL Search Engine Optimization

Cardinal rule of SEO (Search Engine Optimization)

The first cardinal rule of SEO (Search Engine Optimization) is, put key words into:

1. blog or website URL


2. blog title


3. individual post URL (permalink)


4. individual post title

Now one you have created your website or blog, its URL is pretty much fixed. I would be very reluctant to change the URL of a blog as that would mean dead links plus you would be starting from scratch as far as search engines are concern. That leaves the individual post URL or permalink plus the post title.

Previously, with the old classic Blogger, if after publishing a post you change the post title or date, the post URL would also change. That was why I was very very reluctant to change the post URL once it is published. Those bad old days are over. Now with the new improved Blogger, after publishing a post, changing either the post title or the date or both will not change the post URL.

You can make use of this fact to do some SEO using the title. Remember it is good to get keywords into both the post title and post URL remembering that once published, a post URL is fixed, constant. I make use of this by publishing a post twice, once with whatever key words I want in the post title without any words ignored by search engines and without worrying too much about whether it is understandable or not. (words ignored by search engines are words like a, of, the, etc.) After publishing and getting these key words into the post URL (permalink), I can then edit the post title to whatever I want without worrying that the post URL will change.

Take this example - Types of blogs: business blog to promote online merchant. Its original post title was "Types blogs business promote online merchant", not a perfect post title but without words like of, to, etc., all of which would be ignored by search engines. Below is a screen shot of the post as it was originally published:

http://adsense-alert.blogspot.com/2008/06/types-blogs-business-promote-online.html

The last part of the post URL contains the words

types-blogs-business-promote-online

After publishing and getting the post URL established, I can now change the post URL to whatever I want and the above URL will not change. In fact, I changed the post title to "Types of blogs: business blog to promote online merchant", with superfluous (to search engines) of, to, in the post title to make it more readable than the original. Below is a screen shot of the post with the URL unchanged but with a new, readable post title:



Note that the post URL remains the same:

http://adsense-alert.blogspot.com/2008/06/types-blogs-business-promote-online.html