Permalink – Facebook, WordPress, SEO and Benefits

Social media permalinks are very important in the entire digital world. Because URLs can change when an article changes. If this article was previously shared in our social media channel, the link is no longer available after a URL change. Therefore, as a media manager, you should take care to set any links as permalinks.

What does a permalink look like?

A permalink is characterized by the fact that it has a unique ID. This ID is an entry in the database. If you look at it simply, as with a WordPress system, then every new post, every new image, every new page is assigned a unique ID. This ID is available in the URL. It looks like this

• Https://www.example.com/?p=123

However, article names or URLs are best optimized for the search engine. Therefore often not IDs are used but text URL. These usually convert the headline of the respective article into a URL. And that’s what it looks like:

• Title – Search Engine Optimization for Automotive and Tuning
• URL – https://www.example.com/suchmaschinenoptimierung-fur-automobil-und-tuning

If the author changes the title and does not pay attention to the URL manually, most systems also change the URL. If the heading changes, the new URL will look like this:

• Title (new) – Search Engine Optimization for Automotive and Mercedes Tuning
• URL (new) – https://www.example.com/suchmaschinenoptimierung-fur-automobil-und-mercedes-tuning

If you have previously shared these articles in your social media channel, all users who click here will come to a 404 error page. But don’t worry! Very few blog authors change their URL. However, this is possible if an article is updated in the following year. It is not only about content from third parties, but also about own content. If you share a new blog article about Facebook for example. If your Content Manager makes changes again later and the URL is also changed, this link also leads to nothing. For this reason, a participant in the company or the social media agency should make sure that the link structure is clean.

What is a 404 error page?

Whenever a link leads to nothing, i.e. no corresponding post exists on a page, an error code is displayed in the user’s browser. This special error has the number 404 and indicates a non-existent page. If users are too frequently directed to a non-existent page, this has a negative effect on the placement in the search engine. Therefore, as a social media manager, you should make sure that you pay attention to permalinks if possible. Because these will never change due to the unique ID.

How do I get the permalink of a website?

If you know a little bit about HTML, you can right-click and search the source code or examine the element, depending on your browser, open the HTML source code and find hints on the permalink here.