which permalink is better for seo in wordpress

Remove the date. It makes the url longer (harder to read) and many people will avoid clicking on a url if they see that the date is old. Sounds dumb yes, but that's how people think. Low CTR = bad SEO.

+ I have never found any advantage to use the date syntax within the url.
 
I mostly use sitename.com/category/post-name in most of my wordpress onpage optimization.
 
I recommend using %year%/%postname% (ex. /2010/party-time-nyc).

Why use year AND postname and not just postname?

Because WordPress queries the database each time a page/post is requested. The parser parses the URL determining whether the requested page is a WordPress post OR page.

Since both posts and pages will have /postname or /pagename this will use more server resources, but only if you have a high number of pages.

So, bottom line, use some form of date modifier if you a) have a lot of pages (not posts but pages) or b) you plan to have a lot of pages in the future.*

*How many is a lot of pages? I say 35 or more pages.

PS: There's a great post about this topic from a leading WordPress developer. To find it search for "category-in-permalinks-considered-harmful" in G. It's Otto on WordPress in the #1 spot.
 
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Just post name.

Custom: %post_name

If you use keyword-rich post & page names then that is the best for both SEO and userability. Don't let anyone tell you differently.

The key to SEO in a niche site is to try to rank one page per keyword so having your category name in every post is useless and only makes the URLs longer and more cumbersome. Having the date in the post name is even worse. I come to your site looking for timely information and it states right in your URL that the post is 2 years old, I'm going to go somewhere else newer because I'll get the feeling the info on your site is old and outdated. Without the date there, I never give it a second thought.
 
I mostly use sitename.com/category/post-name in most of my wordpress onpage optimization.

This one's pretty good too, especially if you've specifically got your categories as keywords you're aiming for. Never really thought about that. Think I'll give it a try.
 
Edit the URL just for humans, not for Google. If a keyword is found in the URL, it is marked bold by Google and the CTR might get better. Short ones are also better. I often adjust the Permalink of a posting before publishing it, that filler words are removed and the permalink looks better.

From technical aspects, there is really no difference between site.com/keyword/ and site.com/?p=1
 
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for generic sites - i use category/postname
for niche site - i use postname only
 
Its been taught for the last 3 or 4 years that to set up your wordpress blog so that it has the best possible configuration for the search engines go to "customize" in the permalinks section and add:

/%postname%/

Always put your keyword or keyword phrase in the title of your blog post and it will be reflected in the title bar as well as the url. Important when trying to rank for keywords.

If you don't care about search engines then use anything you want :D
 
always important to keep keyword slugs short and juicy i.e. no extraneous words. so for title "Heidi Montag on cover of Maxim Magazine today", your slug wants to be "heidi-montag-maxim-cover"
 
I agree with many of the posts above, this is what I use on mine

/%category%/%postname%.php
 
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