Did you miss me last week? It sure has been busy here with the foreclosure industry exploding. People are joining every day, meaning more support issues, more websites to set up, more training, etc. Sure I could have saved time by using the Instant Article Wizard, but I prefer to make sure all information sent to you is fresh and original. So that takes more time, something that has been scarce here lately.
After setting up a new WordPress blog for someone, one thing I am constantly explaining during their training is the difference between pages and articles. Depending on how your blog is set up, there are subtle differences.
A blog page will have information such as a sales letter, while an article provides industry-related information.
When I set up new blogs, there are various linking formats for the pages and articles. When I initially set mine up, I thought it would be good to have the publishing date in the URL. Little did I know later on that the links would get too long and user unfriendly.
With my own blog being popular and online a long time, it would be tough to change everything over, just as tough as it was to switch from http://websitemanagers.net/blog to http://blog.websitemanagers.net
By default, the article title or page name is added onto the blog URL. WordPress replaces spaces between the words with hyphens to keep those words together. On most websites, spaces in file names and links will appear to be broken so instead of seeing the page, you will see a 404 Page Not Found error. On Windows-based systems, the space code %20 is added instead.
Whenever you create a page or article, the link to that is also
created. Depending on the site template you use, the pages will
have buttons on the top of your blog pages. Creating a long
title for your new page will make that button too large.
Writing articles does the same thing, but is not shown on the button menu with the pages. Instead, it is linked in your Archives or down the side of your blog with the other articles. Again, the title is used for linking.
There is a way shorten the link though. While the title itself may be long, the actual link to that page or article can be shortened. That is done by using the Post Slug option in your editing screen. The purpose of the Post Slug is to provide an alternate link to your page or article.
When you type in a shorter but descriptive Page Slug, the system will again replace spaces with hyphens. You do not have to rely on software to do that for you though. You can manually add hyphens instead of spaces to make sure it is coded properly.
Examples:
Long, date-based link: yoursite.com/2007/09/11/long-article-title-showing-the-topic
Short link using Page Slug: yoursite.com/short-page-title
All the blogs I set up use the short version. If you play with your Permalinks section, make sure the Custom URL is set to /%postname%/ so it will stay short. Then use the Post Slug to shorten the URL to your articles. For pages, always keep the title short when creating them. Just think about how it will look on your site as a button.
If you do not yet have a blog, you are missing out on a lot of traffic and should get started immediately! Visit Website Managers Blog Hosting for more info.
Until next time, have a great week!
Jim Hutchinson
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Website Managers – Blogging Done Right!
p.s. If you want to get your hands on my Master Internet Marketing Manual at no cost, just host your website at Website Managers
