I am Jeff

WordPress permalinks can be a tricky subject.  So I’m going to stick to the basics in answering this question I received from a Real Estate agent up in Seattle: “do u have any permalink structure recommendations?”

Why yes, yes I do…  Here’s how I’ve set permalinks on pretty much all the WordPress blogs I’ve ever setup:

Straight outta the box, WordPress permalinks are stupid. You can see the default setting in the image above and the corresponding URL structure. It’s horrible for search engine optimization. The next two settings aren’t bad, but they’re not great. The last setting, is pretty much just as worthless as the default.

We want to go with a custom structure, that helps maximize how the search engines see the keywords in your URL. As you can see in the image, my preference is to use the category and post name options in the custom URL structure. By doing so, whatever words you choose to use for categories are included in your URL along with the title of each blog post.  It should be noted that this specific string of structure tags is not recommended for WordPress sites that contain a lot of pages. If you’ve got more than a thousand pages, you should add the /%year%/ tag into your permalink structure to avoid the related performance issues. This will grow increasingly important as Google adds site speed into their web search rankings.

Ok, so all that seems pretty easy right?  Yeah, it is…  The hard part of changing your permalink structure is when you’re told you need to change your permissions in order for WordPress to write the new permalink structure. This doesn’t always happen, but if it does, be careful. If done incorrectly, you run the risk of frying your WordPress install or leaving it vulnerable to attacks.  Best to call in a professional if you’re not sure exactly what to do or completely comfortable with the associated risks.

So, hopefully that answers the question for you and gives you a better idea of why you would want to set things up this way.  When setup correctly, the custom permalink structure can help immensely when it comes to SEO.

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This is part of the “pick my brain” series of wordpress support posts. An experiment in social support. If you find this post useful, feel free to donate.

While I was up in Seattle for Real Estate BarCamp this last week, I was asked to facilitate a couple WordPress sessions.  I thoroughly enjoyed helping everyone in the beginner session figure out what the difference between .com and .org is, along with some of the other basics of WordPress. But what really got me going was the advanced session where we got into the real good stuff like URL structures, hosting issues, and my favorite topic du jour “WordPress plugins for Real Estate blogs”.

So, here are my personal favorite plugins, and the ones that were mentioned in my session:

TubePress Pro – Pulls video in from YouTube. Settings allow you to choose to pull videos by username, tags, playlists, etc.  Many options to configure the look and layout of the videos. An example can be seen right here on my blog’s video page and sidebar.

NextGen Gallery – Basic image gallery plugin using images you upload. Plenty of display options including slideshow, and sidebar widgets.  An example, with some really cool pictures, can be seen on the NW Portland Blog.

Tabs Slides – This plugin rocks, especially if you take the time to set it up properly.  It basically allows you to create tabbed content in the middle of your posts or pages.  Great for taking a ton of content and breaking it up into manageable chunks.  Here’s an example on one of our community neighborhood sites, the Portland Octopus (tabs are under the colorful image).

HomeQuest’s IDX Plugin –  What’s the point of having a blog, if you don’t have a home search with lead capture and client manager built into the back end?  HomeQuest’s IDX plugin gives it to you. Plus, the ability to geocode your blog posts directly onto a map alongside listings from your MLS.  Yeah, it’s pretty cool. Full disclosure – I work for HomeQuest and I very briefly mentioned this in the session.  I didn’t want to be accused of pitching my own product!

Using these four plugins, you can build a pretty killer WordPress Real Estate site.

Some other plugins that were mentioned that are worth looking into: ScribeSEO, WordPress Database Backup, and BuddyPress.

If you have any plugins that you’ve used that you think are worth mentioning, feel free to leave a comment below.  I’d love to hear what others have found.

Oh, and if you want to learn a bunch more WordPress stuff like this?  Attend Real Estate WordCamp, coming to Denver April 12th. If you see me roaming the halls looking for a Coke machine, say hello!