Using a Post Slug to Improve the Search Engine Friendliness of Your Post Title
Ever wondered what a Post Slug was? You know that little box in WordPress. Chris from Blog-op.com has written an article about Using WordPress Post Slug to Increase Search Engine Traffic.
What is a Post Slug
A Post Slug is text that will appear in your URL in place of the title of your post. You will notice that I used a ridiculously long name for the title of this post. It gives you a clear idea about what the post is about, however it’s not very clean. Now look at the URL and you will only see “Using Post Slugs” where the title normally appears. So what a Post Slug does is provide you with an opportunity to have one title for your readers and one title for search engines.
Where do I find this feature?
WordPress: If you look in the writing panel of WordPress, on the right side bar you will find the box for writing your post slug (pictured below).
Windows Live Writer: WLW also has a slug option which you will find in the expanded option bar at the bottom of your post edit page.
Why use it?
Using a posts slug won’t be appropriate for every post you write, however, in some situations, particularly when you need a longer title, a post slug may be well worth considering.
Tags: SEO
Trackback from your site.
Comments (19)
Thanks for the link
I think this is my favourite WordPress feature that I’ve found so far, I only wish I’d known 8 months ago……
Thanks for stopping by Chris. It’s useful SEO feature of WordPress, and I guess many people don’t bother finding out what some of the extra features of their blog platform are for. Cheers.
I haven’t been using this feature. It sounds like a good tip to let me make a title that people like and a url the spider like. Now I’m going to have to think before I click “publish”!
Thanks, Simon. I am only just now considering how to make my blog attractive to the search engines (other than linking), so this is one tip I’ll be able to do myself without a huge learning curve!
Damn lol, can’t believe I never saw that feature. About 2 years ago I had my coder create a plugin to do this for me. Guess I can stop paying her to keep it up dot date!
I’d never heard of that! Is it still a feature? I don’t use WordPress. Seems like a brilliant idea. Then again, simple ones always are.
Interesting, so it’s more like a shorter version of title, abridged into the URL. I was always wondering why some people have that for their articles, now I know. Thanks.
Nice tip. You can also use it for seo purposes and put some terms in it. It is just one more feature that makes wordpress so good.
Interesting idea. Never thought about it before. I guess if title is too long a post slug would be better way. Not sure how it effects site in search engines.
Great idea! it’s kind of a compromise between having keyterm rich URLs in wordpress, and having short, manageable URLs for your visitors!… Brilliant!
can\’t find the post slug in my wp post editor page, however I use all in one SEO it does great job in exploiting All factors
Very nice Plugin. I will use it in my blog since most titles are way too long.
wow this is awesome! thank you sooooo much!!!!!! now i know that there is a post slug on wlw!!!
Lovely article. I am looking to find article related to my site so i can have link exchange with them.
When I saw that I realized the potential of this little feature. So simple, yet so useful.
so is the idea to have longtail urls and slugs for the visitors?
Interesting way to use post slugs for SEO. Thanks for showing us this way.
I use WordPress, and i find post slug option very useful for my website. Main concept of this feature is to provide search engine friendly URL which help your website to index well in search engine and stay top on targeted keywords and titles.