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changing permalinks on blog

by digigirl
5 replies
  • SEO
    • |
Hi all, - got a really novice question. I realise I've not customised my wordpress permalinks and still have the post id number for every post (150 in all).

This blog is the beginning of an authority blog rather than a small niche site....I'm wondering if by changing the structure I'm gonna get error messages and wreck my site traffic? What do I simply need to know...?

Any advice I need to know upfront before jumping in and changing the permalinks would be well appreciated!

Thanks
#blog #changing #permalinks
  • Profile picture of the author linkvana
    When you change the permalink structure of your Wordpress site the .htaccess file should automatically redirect all the old URLs to the new URLs. This will pass along the PR of any links to those old pages so you shouldn't see any ranking drops or error messages.

    Just make sure that you test the redirects by going to an old URL(one with a post ID number) and see if it redirects you to the new URL.
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  • Profile picture of the author dminorfmajor
    I knew it moved everything over and automatically redirects old url's to the new ones but I didn't know about the PR as well. Are you sure?
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  • Profile picture of the author MarlboroMonkey
    I wasn't aware .htaccess would do that by default. Cool if it does.

    To pass the PR you need to go in and double check that the redirects are a 301 http code redirect (as opposed to a 302 temporary redirect). If Wordpress does indeed automatically change the .htaccess and redirects for you, I'm sure they were smart enough to make them 301 for you, but you'll want to be sure.

    If it doesn't, there's plugins you can use to redirect the posts. I recommend Yoast SEO anyways, and in that plugin there's an option to do it built in so that will be one less plugin you need to slow down your site.
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    • Profile picture of the author linkvana
      Originally Posted by MarlboroMonkey View Post

      I wasn't aware .htaccess would do that by default. Cool if it does.

      To pass the PR you need to go in and double check that the redirects are a 301 http code redirect (as opposed to a 302 temporary redirect). If Wordpress does indeed automatically change the .htaccess and redirects for you, I'm sure they were smart enough to make them 301 for you, but you'll want to be sure.

      If it doesn't, there's plugins you can use to redirect the posts. I recommend Yoast SEO anyways, and in that plugin there's an option to do it built in so that will be one less plugin you need to slow down your site.
      To clarify, .htaccess is just a file that tells the servers how to behave on certain conditions(such as redirects).

      Wordpress automatically writes to the .htaccess file when you change your permalinks so that your URLs will not break.
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  • Profile picture of the author MarlboroMonkey
    Yeah I get that. Just didn't know it would rewrite the file when you change permalink option in the Wordpress backend. Maybe it's a new thing because I know there's been plugins developed before to deal with this problem.
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