Date First Published: 8th February 2023
Topic: Web Design & Development
Subtopic: SEO
Article Type: Computer Terms & Definitions
Difficulty: MediumDifficulty Level: 5/10
Learn more about what a permalink is in this article.
A permalink is a static link that is designed to remain unchanged in the future and keep its name and structure in the future even if changes are made to the content of the page that they identify. Permalinks are an important part of a website as users use them to visit a website and search engine bots use them to index a website. Most links on a website are permalinks. The URL of this article 'https://computerhelp4all.com/articles/what-is-a-permalink.html' is an example of a permalink.
Like other types of links, permalinks contain the domain name and the piece of the URL that comes after the domain name. This includes the location of the file, which could include a date, category, topic, or anything else. Because search engine bots use them to index websites, they should be SEO-friendly, meaning that they should be easy to understand, not vague, separated by hyphens rather than underscores, and not be too long. Implementing proper SEO permalink practices can help increase the organic traffic of a site.
In links, permanence is useful when content is likely to be linked to or cited by another website. Before the introduction of dynamic websites built on content management systems backed by databases, it was more common for URLs of specific pieces of content to be static and readable, as URL structure and naming were controlled by whatever created that content.
The increased amount of content and difficulty of management resulted in the increase of database-driven systems, and the unmanageable and varying URLs caused policies about URL design and link permanence to be required.
A permalink is different from a dynamic link that contains variable parameters and is usually generated by a script that creates database queries. Dynamic links often contain non-alphanumeric characters, such as %, $, ?, +, =, or & and tend to be longer than permalinks.
Permalinks do not contain non-alphanumeric characters and these types of links keep their name and structure even when changes are made to the content of the page they identify. For example, in the URL ‘example.com/about.html’, the URL would stay the same even if the content of the page describing what the website was about was edited.
The main difference between a permalink and a URL is that a URL is a web address that points to a page or file and a permalink is a specific URL structure that is not designed to change in the future. Every permalink is a URL, but not every URL is a permalink.
Permalinks are not usually changed that often, but they may be changed when the content has been updated and the name of the file is no longer relevant or the page is no longer necessary for the website. Since it is called a permalink, it should not be changed without thought and consideration. Changing permalinks does come with some risks, such as:
In the early days of the World Wide Web, all content was static and all hyperlinks pointed to a specific filename. Later, webpage became dynamic and URLs began to contain query terms and be dynamic.
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