Trailing Slashes, Permalinks, Backlinks and SEO

[GeorgR.]

If you have a (wordpress) blog, you might want to check your permalinks settings.

To my astonishment i found out that not EACH of my sites has/had the same (and right) permalink setting.

Some had /%postname%/ <- note trailing slash

and some others had /%postname% <- without trailing slash

I got very confused since i cross-checked several LINKS in articles of mine, and i saw that the link structure in the articles often did NOT match the permalink setting.

For example i am linking to a post on my site with the slash appended in the hyperlink, while the actual permalink setting in wordpress didnt have a slash. (You can also see this in the sitemap)

NOW..the problem is that opinions regarding this vary, i can list some SEO people telling you it doesnt matter at all - and other people say it matters. Lets assume the worst case scenario....i would have posts which all have a trailing slash in their URL but link to them in the "wrong" way. (Of course the same thing can apply vice versa, depending what your permalink setting is)

What i am saying...if you're picky and assuming this is an issue....look at your permalinks settings and then look at your links you make in your link building. Because you should be consistent in how you link to your articles - not a bunch of links with slash, and then another bunch without.

Not really easy if someone has 100s of sites and discovers that the permalinks settings is not necessarily the same in each one...


To make the issue even more confusing, there are also various opinions what the "best" permalink settings are. Some say /%postname%/ WITH slash. (Matt Cutts uses it on his blog!) - but many tell you that WITHOUT trailing slash is better.Then there is a bunch who say that neither of them is optimal.

[edmltw]

Hey George,

Can see where you're coming at. When your page's ranking on the top page, all these on-page optimization techniques seem to be the deciding factor.

It will be awesome if you could provide some case studies of whether the "/" is better or the "NO /" has a better impact on SERPs.

Ed

Originally Posted by GeorgR.

If you have a (wordpress) blog, you might want to check your permalinks settings.

To my astonishment i found out that not EACH of my sites has/had the same (and right) permalink setting.

Some had /%postname%/ <- note trailing slash

and some others had /%postname% <- without trailing slash

I got very confused since i cross-checked several LINKS in articles of mine, and i saw that the link structure in the articles often did NOT match the permalink setting.

For example i am linking to a post on my site with the slash appended in the hyperlink, while the actual permalink setting in wordpress didnt have a slash. (You can also see this in the sitemap)

NOW..the problem is that opinions regarding this vary, i can list some SEO people telling you it doesnt matter at all - and other people say it matters. Lets assume the worst case scenario....i would have posts which all have a trailing slash in their URL but link to them in the "wrong" way. (Of course the same thing can apply vice versa, depending what your permalink setting is)

What i am saying...if you're picky and assuming this is an issue....look at your permalinks settings and then look at your links you make in your link building. Because you should be consistent in how you link to your articles - not a bunch of links with slash, and then another bunch without.

Not really easy if someone has 100s of sites and discovers that the permalinks settings is not necessarily the same in each one...


To make the issue even more confusing, there are also various opinions what the "best" permalink settings are. Some say /%postname%/ WITH slash. (Matt Cutts uses it on his blog!) - but many tell you that WITHOUT trailing slash is better.Then there is a bunch who say that neither of them is optimal.

[Fernando Veloso]

Checked some of mine and all of them are: /%postname%.

Question is: Whats the proper way? With slash? No slash? Makes a difference?

[edmltw]

It's hard to claim anything without an actual case study, maybe Terry or Tom could do a quick experiment about it.

But I think they're quite busy with their new backlink forums though.. Heh

Ed

Originally Posted by Fernando Veloso

Checked some of mine and all of them are: /%postname%.

Question is: Whats the proper way? With slash? No slash? Makes a difference?

[shaktimaan]

Urls with trailing slash load faster. Now page load time is a part of google's algorithm. So trailing slashes are good for seo as they reduce page load time.

[Fernando Veloso]

Originally Posted by shaktimaan

Urls with trailing slash load faster. Now page load time is a part of google's algorithm. So trailing slashes are good for seo as they reduce page load time.

Do you have a source for that information? Or is this another urban myth?

Edit: Anyway, just discovered this article:
lists.automattic dot com/pipermail/wp-hackers/2009-January/024079.html

[GeorgR.]

Originally Posted by Fernando Veloso

Checked some of mine and all of them are: /%postname%.

Question is: Whats the proper way? With slash? No slash? Makes a difference?

the "proper" way would be to match your permalink settings if you build links. So if you dont use "/" at the end also link to your articles without the slash.

[stefffff]

with slash or without slash... hmm, what about the good old .html?

[Peter Gregory]

Originally Posted by GeorgR.

the "proper" way would be to match your permalink settings if you build links. So if you dont use "/" at the end also link to your articles without the slash.

I agree, rather than worrying too much about having it or not it is much more important to remain consistent in whichever way you choose throughout the site structure as well as in your link building campaigns.