One of the best features in wordpress history is the use of permalinks. With the rise of basic to advanced content management systems, it’s likely that automated or a script generated page will always make a dull and pointless looking URL. But thanks to permalinks, you can now have pretty looking and readable URL that includes your page name or your post title.
For obsessive compulsive bloggers and developers, this will help tidy up things a bit which can be very beneficial in the long run, come link posting in emails, blogs, forums, networks or link building for better SEO. If you’re running static pages on your site that makes use of a gallery with multiple subpages underneath, for example, rather than using the default generated URL, you can change it to a pretty readable link specifically defined to uniquely brand your articles or contents.A few examples are as follows:
www.domain.com/?page_id=101 to: www.domain.com/gallery/christmas-2006/
www.domain.com/?p=76 to: www.domain.com/2007/12/24/christmas-eve/
www.domain.com/?p=77 to: www.domain.com/updates/im-getting-married.html
www.domain.com/?page_id=14 to: www.domain.com/store/paintings-on-sale/
Permalinks are primarily numeric URL converted to readable names using either/any of the following combinations: (1)year, (2)month, (3)day, (4)hour, (5)minute, (6)author, (7)page name or (8)postname using mod_rewrite. With regards to search engine optimization, search engines basically put more attention in reading your root folder (www.domain.com/index.html) and down the sub folders (www.domain.com/subfolder/). Your links will then be verified with what ever algorythm or ai the crawlers are programmed to use. This URL will tell them what your content is about and if other websites are using the same URL.
To use wordpress permalinks feature, all you have to do login to your wp-admin page, go to Options > Permalinks. You are given 4 options to choose from and all of them use different mod_rewrite codes which you can use. A list of the basic custom codes you can use are as follows :
/%year%/ = year published
/%monthnum%/ = month published
/%day%/ = day of the month published
/%postname%/ = title of your post or page
To have your URL end in .html, all you have to as add the .html extension after the last % or before the ending / (Ex. /%postname%.html/).
Before activating permalinks, check to see if you have pages indexed on google by using site:www.domain.com on your search. If this is the case, all you need to do is use the Permalink Migration Plugin which will help avoid breaking internal links inside your blog without disturbing your search engine indexed pages and PR.