Sunday, October 18, 2015

How to set the URL for Blogger posts

This article shows how to use the Permalink options to control the URL (ie website address) used for a post in your blog.


When you first publish a post in blogger, an URL (called a permalink in blogger) is automatically generated for that post. It looks like:

www.yourDomain/yyyy/mm/WORDS-ABOUT-MY-POST

In this URL:

  • yourDomain is either your custom domain / third-party URL   (eg fred-fish.com) or your blogspot domain if you aren't using a custom domain at the time (eg www.blogger-hints-and-tips.blogspot.com)
  • yyyy/mm is the year and month of the post's original publication date.

Initially, Blogger choses the WORDS-ABOUT-YOUR-MY based on the title, or the first words in the post if the title was blank. They use some rules eg leaving out "the" and other common words, and putting numbers on the end so that every post has a unique URL (called a "permalink" in Blogger).

However Blogger also has a tool that lets you choose the WORDS-ABOUT-YOUR-POST separately from the post-title.



How to change the customizable part of the URL for a post

1  Edit the post in the usual way.

2  In the Post Settings area (currently at the right hand side of the editor), there is a section called Permalink.

3   Click on Links to show the options in it.

4   Click the custom URL radio button

5   Type the words that you want to use in WORDS-ABOUT-YOUR-POST into the Custom URL box

6   Click Done.

7   Finish the post, and Publish it.


Restrictions

The only characters you can use are:
  • lowercase letters (ie a, b, c ... z)
  • uppercase letters (ie A, B, C ... Z)
  • digits (ie 0, 1, 2 ... 9)
  • underscore (ie _)
  • dash (ie - )
  • full-stop, also known as a period (ie .)
It looks like there is no restriction on the number of characters you can put into the URL.  For example, I was just able to make a post in my test blog, with this URL:  
http://bhat-draftarticlestore.blogspot.ie/2012/07/123456789-123456789-123456789-123456789-123456789-123456789-123456789-123456789-123456789-123456789-123456789-123456789-123456789-123456789-123456789-123456789-123456789-123456789-123456789-123456789-123456789-123456789-123456789-123456789-123456789-123456789-123456789-123456789-123456789-123456789-.html
(you cannot see the post, because that particular blog isn't open for public reading.)


If the combinaton of yyyy-mm from post-date (which you can change - see Setting the Post Date) and WORDS-ABOUT-YOUR-BLOG is not unique, Blogger will leave out the last character(s), and put in numbers to make it unique.

It only applies to Posts, not Pages:  the only way to influence the URL / permalink for a Page on your blog is to choose the initial words in the page-title very carefully.   (Ref:  the difference between Posts and Pages)


Why should you bother? What words should you use?

Firstly, it's only worth changing the custom words in your post-URL  if SEO matters for your blog.

If you think the change is worth it, then you need to think about what specific words
1) accurately reflect the content of your blog, and
2) are likely to be the words that people search for.

Unless you're a spammer, there is no point in making your post url www.myBlog/2012-07/hot-and-sexy-topic if your post doesn't have any content about hot-and-sexy-topic. (And if you are a spammer, you may as well leave Blogger now, before you get kicked off anyway.)

Leave out smaller filler words like "the" "a" "and" - unless they are relevant to the post-contents. For example include "the Who" if your post is about the band called The Who, but leave it out if your post is about the cats who can fly.

Lastly, many SEO experts (self-proclaimed and otherwise) say that dashes are better than dots or underscores. Only Google and Bing know if they'are correct or not. But it's probably a good idea to use xxx-yy-aaaa instead of xxx_yy_aaaa or xxx.yy.aaaa, just in case they are.


Changing the post-title after publication

Google's help-article about the custom-permalink feature says:
"because Blogger automatically creates the URL from information from your post title, your URL would change should you decide to edit the title. This would result in broken links, and fewer visitors to your blog"

This isn't the way Blogger worked before: until now, I often published a post with one title using the words I wanted in the URL, and then very quickly edit it and change the title to the words I wanted in the title. For example, for a recent post
  • the URL is  http://blogger-hints-and-tips.blogspot.com/2012/07/html-code-for-popular-gadgets-in.html
  • the post-title is now:  Where to get the HTML code for popular gadgets in Blogger

I just tried this again in my test-blog, and found that it's still true: even if you change the title, the post URL doesn't change.


Changing the custom-URL words after publication

Originally, after you hit the Publish button for the first time, there was no way change the permalink:  if you click on the Permalink option in Post Settings, you are shown the custom value that you chose, but you cannot change it.




However you can now:

  • Edit the post.
  • Click the Revert to draft button.
  • Edit the post URL in the same way

and the URL of your post will be changed.  Note that if you do this, the post characteristics (view count, comments) are kept.   This means that Blogger must be associating them with the unchanged internal post-identifier, not the URL.

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11 comments:

  1. Thanks, but i am expiriencing the problem with editing of pages. If i change title of existing page, then the URL is changed also. My "main page" (with permalink navigation) was broken yesterday because of this bug : (

    Could you please check if it is a common problem or just my local/personal?

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Ouch.

      I found an interesting comment on the Google Operatng System blog (http://googlesystem.blogspot.com/2012/07/custom-blogger-url.html) today:

      "As a side note, there's a mistake in the help center page for this feature: "Because Blogger automatically creates the URL from information from your post title, your URL would change should you decide to edit the title. This would result in broken links, and fewer visitors to your blog." That used to be a major annoyance in the pre-2006 Blogger, but
      it's no longer the case today.
      "

      So my guess is that one Blogger engineer hadn't worked in the area for a while, and managed to go back to the old way of doing things, and that
      this got picked up by whoever wrote the help too.

      When I tested (about 2 hours before I published my post), it definitely wasn't working that way: in a published post that I hadn't set the custom-URL words for, I changed the title, and the post URL didn't change. And I just did another test now on a post that was first published a few weeks ago, and again it didn't happen.

      So hopefully the bug is now removed again.

      One option to fix your problem with the "main page" is to use the custom-redirects feature to send traffic from the broken links to the new URL.

      Delete
  2. Hey fellow Kiwi!

    Love your site, thanks for the tips and help.

    I'm so new to blogging I don't have a following yet--by design! Not quite ready to go 'public' since I'm still learning the basic ways and means (er, mistakes) and only have a few posts up so far. I find myself editing my posts too often to want anyone looking at them quite yet. Sucks being a perfectionist! (Your idea of a pre-production blog is a great idea. Might have to look into doing that.)

    Anyway, I made this mistake with the URL on my first post and needed to change it after I published. So I just reverted the post to draft, changed the URL and then republished it. I tested it first on a dummy post to see if the date would change too but it didn't.

    Of course there's a risk if you have an attentive following or an RSS feed, etc., because the old link won't work anymore--and you'll have to make the appropriate changes on your own site too--but if you really need to change the URL after publication this works.

    Regards, and thanks again mate.

    Kaz.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Is there any way we can remove date from Posts title itself?

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. If required one can uses pages to avoid date in url. With posts there is no way to remove date a of now.

      Delete
  4. Good topic. I want to change my url nale that is the link is now ....../2010/10/post11.html and I want to change it into /2010/10/mantoam-two.html :) :(

    ReplyDelete
  5. hi, is there any way to exclude yyyy/mm from the url.

    ReplyDelete
  6. I found out there is a way to change URL AFTER publishing the post.

    Simply revert the post back to draft, edit the custom URL, then publish again.

    As for the 'page' URLS, add a break so that only the title you put on the page appears on the URL.

    www.ladyrattus.com

    ReplyDelete
  7. 1. How do I show the permalink along with the post itself by »gadget«, automatically, for the reader to copy and possiobly promote? Currenty I add a line at the bottom of each post manually.
    2. »Revert the post back to draft …« how to do that? When I wanted to »de-publish« a post, I had to copy the HTML, paste it into a new post (not published), then purge the original post.
    • Kindly notify me at Fritz@Joern.De, my gmail account is just an archive.

    ReplyDelete
  8. found out there is a way to change URL AFTER publishing the post. thanks. http://mutludent.com

    ReplyDelete
  9. Hi, I have an issue with count view for my post. I am using classic blogger template. I realised that although everything works well, there seem to be a detachment between my permalink and view count. If I use the blogger template, then everything works fine. Do you know if there is a code where I can connect the permalink and view count? Http://misterandmissusko.blogspot.com

    ReplyDelete