WordPress "Pretty URL" Question

[ktaylor310]

When setting up "pretty urls" in Wordpress, is there an advantage to using "year, month, date" with respect to search engines?

[Karri]

I can't think of one. My preference is still to use a snippet of the post title. It's more memorable (if you keep it simple) and when people link back to the post with the permalink you get a bit of an SEO boost from keyword rich anchor text that results (assuming you're using relevant/descriptive post titles of course).

Karri

[ktaylor310]

Hi Karri, I wasn't very clear in my post. I meant in addition to the post name. I was thinking the date might help searchers in a situation where they limited the date range of their search, but I wasn't sure if it could possibly impact Google - say by indicating the information is current.

[Karri]

You're right - I misunderstood the question Sorry about that!

In my mind it would perhaps indirectly impact SEO in terms of potential anchor text should someone link back to that page. It's probably more important, however, that the date is contained somewhere within the post (which it usually is on blogs).

Interested to see what others might say about this.

Karri

[jesse060]

Well, I'm not sure if it would help SEO a lot. But if you want to put it in, it's best to put the date after the postname snippit, because google tends to give more weight to words earlier in an url.

[jenno]

I agree with jesse. I don't believe the date is too important but I do know Google tends to bump up rankings for more recent results.

[camp185]

I like to use custom structure, and then I just put in the text box: /archives/%postname%/