How important is permalink structure?

I'm hosting my blog on a free host (don't laugh, I have $2 in my paypal and will upgrade hosts when the need and ad money comes) and for some reason http://www.wordplop.com/2008/03/27/sample-post/ doesn't work. I can only use http://www.wordplop.com/?p=123 as the permalink structure. Will I lose out on much if I use the ?p=123 one? How will it affect people's willingness to click on my site from google and how will it affect google showing my site with related keywords on the front page?

 

It's controversial question really. It depends on how good your on-page SEO is really.

But of course yes, for Adsense to work on your pages and for Search engines to CLEARLY understand what your post is all about, it's better to use the %postname% in your permalink instead of numbers.

Many forums have switched their linking structure by getting the 'archiving' feature that allows every page to be displayed as a .html page instead of the usual PHP linking structure that we are so used to seeing.

Hope that helps

 

Permalinks are essential, it doesnt matter for your visitors that come in via Google but the problem is with Google.

Permalinks are essential for your onpage SEO!

My advise: scrape together some money and upgrade immediately.

Also, if you do it later you have to redirect all your url's. I don't know your posting frequentie but this can really a big job after a couple of months.

Take my advise, find some money and upgrade.

 

Hmm ok thanks, I'll look into why it doesn't work with my current host. But I just can't get a paid host right now.

 

check at your file manager is there .htaccess ??

if the file not there create one and set chamod to 666

maybe this can help you

 

Dude thank you so much I chmodded it to 666, set the permalink structure options, and chmodded it back to what it was, and now it works! I thought it had something to do with htaccess, but I thought I had to add something into it. rep+

BTW @ TheDutchMan - I don't have to redo any links, the old links automatically redirect to the new ones. So if you were to go to http://www.wordplop.com/?p=21 it would automatically take you to http://www.wordplop.com/2008/03/27/macbook-air-gets-hacked-in-2-minutes-pwn-2-own/

 

well now I need help, I tried using the option in Wordpress to change my permalink structure and now none of my pages are loading. It says something about a 302 error


Anyone had this issue?

 

Yea that's the exact same thing that happened to me. Chmod your htaccess file to 666. Or if you're not using an FTP manager, set it to read/write for all 3 users. if you don't have an htaccess file, open notepad, leave it blank, and save as ".htaccess" without the quotes, and don't forget the period before the word; then upload it to your root directory and set its permissions.

 

Thanks for replying. I do have an htaccess file to redirect the root page to my wordpress blog.
So what is the exact text I add?
And does it stay there permanently? I see you said you chmodded it back to how it was, how do you do that?

 

Ok, I think i get it now...right click my htaccess file in the FTP Client, set it to 666, make the changes then revert to 644.
Is it as simple as that?

 

Yes, that's all I had to do. But in your previous post you said your wordpress blog is not in your root? It might be different then.

 

Nope, it worked like a charm. Thanks mate.

 

The best permalink structure I think is /category/postname.html. Its good for SEO too, and looks good.

 

That makes a lot of sense, but what if a post is in multiple categories?

 

if your post is in multiple categories, WordPress will choose the first category.
But you can change that up too if you want by using the "post slug"
and naming the post whatever you want

 

ur welcome

 

Free hosting sometimes don't support .htaccess, and wordpress generate htaccess for the permlinks, and permlinks are important in SEO so much, so wait and get a host.