Jim one of my readers emailed me with a great question, so I thought I would turn this into a blog post, as the question has come up before.
Basically the question is, how to change permalink structure sitewide on WordPress blogs and still retain rankins, PR and backlinks?
As discussed in Website Traffic That Converts, having proper permalink structures, which are effective for SEO is very important, and should be one of the first settings when setting up a new blog.
The optimal permalink set up is to use domain/post-name, which gives you domain.com/keywords-keywords-keywords.
Set Up Proper Permalinks in WordPress Admin
Settings - Permalinks - Select Custom Structure and place this trail /%postname%/ in the box.
Issues with Existing Blog Posts and Permalink Changes
For those of you who are playing catch up and want to change the permalink structure of an existing blog that has many posts and pages, this will be more complex, and will have some considerations.
Non Ranking Blogs
For newer blogs that really don't have any rankings you still need to take care with changing permalinks. Remember that if you change the permalink structure on a blog that has several to a lot of posts then all the existing url will return a bunch of Error 404 pages, and while the sitemap will update to the new URL's and the search engines will eventually catch up, it's NEVER a good idea to have a lot of 404 pages sitting on your site, the proper way to do this is with 301 redirects.
Ranking Blogs
If those posts are ranking, have PR and backlinks, simply changing the permalinks will effectively kill those rankings, along with PR and any backlinks that point to those pages. Basically, if you just go and change the permalink structures in the WP dashboard all the existing post URL's will render 404 Error pages, and therefore will disappear from the SERPS.
If you have an existing blog with many post pages and you still want to change the permalink structure because you realize your existing one is not optimal for SEO or users BUT you still want to keep the attributes those posts may have, like PR, rankings and backlinks, then you need to change those permalinks with 301 redirects.
301 Redirects
Basically a 301 redirect, which is a permanent instruction telling the search engines that the page has moved to another one, tells the search engines that the page is still the same, just the URL has moved and so rankings, PR and backlinks will roll to the new URL. In fact, Google is very good at this kind of roll over, I can tell you from personal experience, that as long as the 301 Redirect is done correctly, rankings and PR will not be affected, though they might see a temporary drop, you can learn more about it at Google on 301 Redirects.
Options for Implementing 301 Redirects in WordPress
First and Foremost
***If you have a massive blog that ranks well and does well in search engines, then consider just leaving it as it is, I probably would not do such mass changes on a blog that is doing fine in SERPS.
Always be sure and make a backup of your database in case anything gets messed up, you can install the original version of your blog, WP Database backup is a good plugin for this and should actually be used on all your blogs to backup databases regularly.
Manual
Manual redirects done via individual hosting accounts within the htaaccess files. If you know code this is one option, but this is not recommended for those without any knowledge of code, and can be quite cumbersome if you need to redirect a lot of pages, such as the case with site wide permalink changes.
Permalinks Migration
This is the one plugin that automates the 301 process sitewide so all pages will be redirected. So all old permalinks will convert to new permalinks automatically, and a 301 redirection will be implemented so that rankings and PR will roll over to the new URL's.
Redirection WordPress Plugin
This one has a lot of features, but only redirects one page at a time, so not the best option for changing permalinks site wide, but great for doing 301's on a page by page basis. This plugin is great to have around in case there are times when you want to change a page's URL structure and move it somewhere else properly.
Follow Me on Twitter @: dannyintampa
(1 comments)
Good points, many people don’t realize or even think about the pr you will lose if you don’t have a redirect, this can be very important if you do rank well.
.-= Danny @ Fl Vacation Rentals´s last blog ..Tavernier Florida Keys 107 =-.
Follow Me on Twitter @: DennisEdell
(35 comments)
I use the Platinum SEO plugin with the auto-redirect feature built in.
I’m wondering though if I should switch back to the all-in-one SEO plugin so I can use Scribe, and use the permalinks migration plugin for that feature…hmm.
Question – would it make any sense to use Permalinks Migration and Redirection WordPress Plugin on the same blog?
.-= Dennis Edell | Direct Sales Marketing´s last blog ..UPDATED: Aweber Affiliate Link Contest! – This Is It!! =-.
@ Dennis
Yes it would make sense, because they serve a different purpose. the Migration redirects ALL pages and the Redirection only one selected page at a time, so both serve a purpose.
Follow Me on Twitter @: DennisEdell
(35 comments)
if moving all posts/pages from one blog to another, re-publishing one at a time over time, which would you use?
.-= Dennis Edell | Direct Sales Marketing´s last blog ..New Form of Human SPAM – Now via Yahoo Messenger =-.
@ Dennis,
I am not sure how these plugins would perform when republishing from one DOMAIN to ANOTHER, I suppose that you could try a page and see what happens. You would first need to set up the page on the new blog, then redirect the old blog post to that new page. The Redirection one would have to be used for that.
Overall, if you want to redirect an entire OLD DOMAIN to a NEW one, then I would not use plugins at all, but use the htaaccess file with special code. Dennis, I am leaving for the weekend, but I will email you on Monday with how I did this on a domain. The htaaccess is tricky as you have to use proper code to make sure everything runs smoothly.
Follow Me on Twitter @: GrowMap
(1 comments)
When I wrote my post on How to Clean Up WordPress Title permalinks I mentioned that you can use the Platinum SEO plugin to automatically redirect from the old URLs to the new ones.
I since found that some of those links are not still valid but they had a strange format because they had been migrated from another blog platform. I believe it works fine for standard WordPress redirects.
.-= Gail from GrowMap´s last blog ..Father’s Day Word of Mouth Gift Card Giveaway =-.
Good info – up until recently I was incorporating the post date into my post links but I changed over to the method you describe here and I think my SEO will benefit in the long run.
.-= Chicago Bears Hats´s last blog ..Chicago Bears Hats Review: 2010 Orange Cap =-.
Follow Me on Twitter @: sonlinebiz
(1 comments)
I use Scott Yang’s Permalink Redirect and it works beautifully well SITEWIDE! I’ve changed my permalinks like 3 times and the plug-in has been able to keep up with the changes.
.-= Udegbunam Chukwudi | Make Money Online´s last blog ..Make Your Blog 10x Faster With W3 Total Cache Plug-in =-.
@ Udegbunam Chukwudi
Thanks for letting us know, glad it works well.
Others who are unfamiliar with SEO redirect seemed to be scared in trying this out. I have seen pages with 404 errors while trying to view the page. Sometimes it’s just sad seeing the previous blogs you’ve visited which are actually good suddenly disappears due to inappropriate formatting.
.-= Headphone Reviews´s last blog ..May 28, Shure E2c Earbud Headphones =-.
Follow Me on Twitter @: danalingga
(2 comments)
That’s why change it (the permalink) in the very fist step of blogging is a must. It is so many loss if change it after the blog is running in certain time.
.-= Dana @ Blogging Tips Blog´s last blog ..Blogging Tips Blog Accept Guest Blogger Now =-.
This post is interesting. I was unaware that a blog or webpage could have the domain changed and still retain PR rank and inbound links but I do agree that if your site or blog is getting massive amounts of visitors and preforming well it should be left alone. Just continue to optimize it. I would say if you have done your keyword research and applied it to your domain name as well as the meta and description tags as well as the body tag then you should not have to worry about 301 redirects and plugins in the first place.
I believe that /%postname% works wonder! But will it give you a boost in PR?
Stefano latest blog.. Increase Your Traffic
.-= Stefano ´s last blog ..Turbo Traffic System – REVIEWED! =-.
CHanging permalinks in wordpress is a great idea because we can make our url as search engine friendly. There are some options are available in wordpress to change the permalinks. I found using post name in url is the best idea. It can be done by %postname% . You article clearly says about permalinks. it will be very useful for the wordpress bloggers.
Follow Me on Twitter @: Eseotips
(2 comments)
I use /%category%/%postname%/ . Is it great for seo ?
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@ Eseotips
I think it’s better to just have /%postname%/, but your way isn’t awful.
Follow Me on Twitter @: DennisEdell
(35 comments)
@ Eseotips
Yes it is, especially if your category names are good keywords. However, and this is a big however, if you’re the antsy type, changing your categories around every so often, you can do lot more harm then good.
Dennis Edell | Direct Sales Marketing recently posted..Comment Replies – Do You Even Notice?
Not only the keywords in the pages, but (if you can) in your URL and anyway and the metatitile and metadescription. Don’t forget to change them in each page of your website. GG notify you the duplicate keywords in Title and description of you website in his tool GG for webmaster
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Great post! I noticed on my website so problem with many links last week. I can confirm it is really important to have a good structure with “valid link”. I can suggest you to use Google Webmaster tool to find and determine if you have some break link.
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yes,I think its depend on your post and blog if you have a good blog and have many post and updated in regular basics.
This topic is very interesting and you had provided a comprehensive ways or method to achieve success with Permalinks. Thank you for this educative post.
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Redirects are great ways to keep the rankings from the previous structure, but it can take some time before the redirect takes place and carries over. For that short period of time in between your rankings could be affected.
Follow Me on Twitter @: webmaster_serve
(9 comments)
Great info, using 301 redirects to save your backlink values is a well known fact, however, if Google has indexed that page before you change the permalink, it usually takes a while for Google to re-index the pages.
Thanks for the post.
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This post is interesting. I was unaware that a blog or webpage could have the domain changed and still retain PR rank and inbound links but I do agree that if your site or blog is getting massive amounts of visitors and preforming well it should be left alone.
Wow, thanks. I was actually about to change my permalinks on an older blog, now I’ll use the redirect. I didn’t know the PR would change. Thanks
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(23 comments)
The redirection plugin makes it easy. Htaccess scares some people
The redirection plugin also helps you see how many hits you get on the links.
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