WordPress SEO Starts with a Clean Search Engine Friendly URL

Running a WordPress Blog is best done on you own Domain, and for the best results you need to create Search Engine Friendly URL’s.
This means instead of a post link like http://seo4wordpress.wordpress.com/page=33 (example) you get links to http://seo4wordpress.wordpress.com/2007/03/31/the-beginning-of-search-engine-optimization-for-wordpress/

If you want to use the permalinks option to get clean urls, there are three conditions you have to meet:

Conditions: 

• Webserver running on a Unix or Linux Distribution (Windows is possible, but much harder)
• Webserver software you use is Apache with the MOD_Rewrite module active (Most hosting servers provide this)
• Use of you own .htaccess file.

If your webhosting provider is running these options, as said most of the do, you are ready to activate the permalinks option.

Login to you administration panel and go to the Options menu and then choose for Permalinks.
Tick the option – Custom and use then /%postname%/ for the best results.

WordPress will not let you create the same post slugs so you don’t need to be affraid that you get duplicate urls..

The .htaccess File

Once you set the option, you get an update of the field content below that shows you the content of what is going to be your .htaccess file.

If you uploaded an empty .htaccess file and made sure it was writable WordPress would have filled it for you.

If you didn’t you need to copy and past the content of that field into an empty file created with Notepad, Not Word or any other wordprocessor, because you need a flat file.

Save it as htaccess.txt and then upload it to your root directory of your wordpress installation.
Once you have done that, set the permissions to 707 and rename the file to .htacess.

Most FTP Programs will not show you the file anymore, than the . files are hidden files in Unix.
Fillezilla has an option to show you these hidden files.

If you did everything the right way, you should now see your URL as mentioned above.