URL or Slug or permalink of the posts is very important for search engine optimization as it provide some keywords to the search engines. Slug is a part of URL which refers to the post. Bloggers should optimize the slug in such a way that it should be short and informative. By default, the slug of a post would be the title of the post with dash (-) in between the words.
Below are some key points for optimizing the slug or URL of the posts to improve the traffic flow,
I) URL or Slug should be short and informative.
II) Use relational keywords in slug so that search engine can understand the content flow. Relational keywords means there should be a logical flow between the words used in slug.
III) URL should have blog-name/category/post-slug/post-id. This is not a hard and fast rule but you can follow this technique to route the search engine thru a proper channel.
IV) Avoid repetitions of a word in slug, use other words in place of that.
V) Don’t use “the”, “of”, “when”, “so” kind of words in slug, they don’t participate in SEO.
VI)Â Don’t use redirects for any of your post on your blog. You can send the links to your friends by using tinyurl or other services but don’t put that on your blog. They are of no use for SEO.
VII) Slug should not have special characters.
VIII) Don’t use near to duplicate slug on your post. try some other words or phrases.
IX) Words in slug should be present in your content, don’t use random words.
You can optimize the slug or URL of you posts by editing the same on your wordpress platform or other platforms you prefer. You can use Windows Live Writer Slug option to optimize the slug of the post. There are wordpress plug-ins like Slug SEO available to do so but I think that can be done without any plug-in as well.
Below is the screenshot of my wordpress post editor where you can see the space where you can update the permalink of the post.
Always take your time to plan the keywords of your post and put them logically into the URL or Slug of the post to provide a decent path to the search engine.