The Most Important Setting To Change From Default In WordPress
The most important setting to change from default in WordPress is the permalink for your post. If you fail to change this setting it will almost certainly guarantee failure when it comes to ranking in search results.
I love WordPress for many reasons. One of them is it’s simplicity to use, even for those of us who are “technophobes”.
The permalink is the URL which will appear for each post you publish on WordPress. The default setting is a number, eg https://21stcenturybusinessentrepreneur.com/?p=123 but if you leave this setting unaltered you are blowing a key element of how your page will rank on the search terms you’re aiming to be found for. If you’re in any doubt, take a look at this article which I recently featured on my Social Media pages: How Exact Match Domains Have Weathered the Penguin Storm. It’s on a slightly different subject but take a look at the title. You’ll see the subject neatly appearing in the URL. Then go on to read the article itself, if you still have any doubts about the importance of the URL including your subject title.
If you look at the URL for this post itself you see http://21stcenturybusinessentreprenur.com/the-most-important-setting-to-change-from-default-in-wordpress/. Decide for yourself whether that looks better than a group of numbers and symbols, but the new format will immediately tell visitors what the page is about before they click on it. Even more critically, the words in the URL will also be highlighted in search engine results if your post is relevant to the search query.
To change your permalinks all that’s required is a quick visit to the Settings >> Permalinks option. Then click the Custom Structure option and enter /%postname%/ From now on your page title will automatically appear in your URL title for that page, giving it both a much more professional appearance and massively transforming it’s potential for appearing high on the search engine rankings for that title.
If you want to further enhance this, shorten the post slug when you are writing an article, if you don’t want the URL to use all of the words in your title. All quite easy alterations but one’s which will massively boost your page’s prospects of being found. That’s why it’s the most important setting to change from default in WordPress. If you’ve any questions or comments, send them to me in the comments box below or through one of my Social Media pages. It will be great to hear from you.
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Patrick Clarke - 21st Century Business Entrepreneur (Social Media Business Professional, Online & offline business owner & founder). If you are a business owner or professional person looking to grow your business and get more sales or clients, or expand your network of connections, then I can help you. If you need help with your LinkedIn profile, have a "dead" Facebook Fan Page, need professional blogging articles or don't know how to use Google+ for your Local SEO Marketing, then get in touch. I would be pleased to assist. The results might astonish you!Subscribe
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