How to pass parameter in wordpress url?

Do the pros of /%category%/ permalinks in Wordpress outweigh the performance cons?

• The Wordpress site points out that permalinks using author, tag, category, or postname is bad for performance (http://codex.wordpress.org/Using_Permalink).  That doesn't leave many options besides the parameter based default, a long date based URL, or the use of the irrelevant Post ID in the string. 's great post on the subject (http://ottopress.com/2010/category-in-permalinks-considered-harmful/) points out some of the reasons that it affects performance while dismissing the impact the address has on SEO.  Unfortunately, the post doesn't go in to any detail to validate the claim that URLs have no impact on SEO. has another great post on the subject at http://zemalf.com/1152/wordpress-permalinks/ I'm not going to make an an argument for or against in my question here but the reason for this question is that there is a mountain of articles explaining the benefits of permalinks or simple URLs on SEO.  Are those benefits no longer realized?  Does your URL no longer impact SEO?  Are search users not more inclined to click on a result in which the address is contextually relevant?  Are URL length of folder depth not factors any more?  Are shortlinks better? How much of this Quora thread is inaccurate or misleading?

• Answer:

  I never said they have no impact on SEO. URLs most certainly do have impact on SEO. However, including category like that doesn't have much, if any, impact on SEO. If the keyword of the category is so important, then you should be including it in the post title (and subsequently, the postname and URL). If you really want to structure your site in a /category/post-title fashion, then you should be using static Pages and not Posts. Posts are time-based, and reflecting that time-based method in the URL, by including the year or date, improves your sites usability. Information in posts can go stale after a few years, and it's good for your readers to know when a post was made. "Folder depth" on the other hand, is completely and totally irrelevant to SEO. Google isn't interested in the depth, but they do only care about the first 10 keywords or so in the URL, regardless of the separators between them. The absolute most important thing for SEO is the Post Title. The Post Title gets converted into the %postname%, which is in the URL, and the post title itself is repeated on the page in an H2 or H3 tag. This reinforces it and thus it will be the main keyword draw for the post. Oh, and the content of the post matters a lot too. :)