WordPress SEO : Change to a new permalink structure while maintaining the old one

Written on March 27, 2007 by 12 Comments

Many WordPress bloggers that start off  blogging without much knowledge of SEO, soon realize realize that the WordPress permalink structure they chose wasn't well-optimized for search-engines. Although being aware of the problem, some chose to stick to the old structure, since they fear that migrating to a new structure will cause loss of page rank and trackback/links from other websites. Fear no more.

Luckily enough, there seems to be a WordPress plugin especially made for that purpose written by Dean Lee and called "Permalinks Migration Plugin for wordpress".  You could actually see that Dean Lee has performed the migration by comparing his current permalink structure "/wordpress/permalinks-migration-plugin/" with the one that appears when browsing back comments "/?p=111&cp=10#comments", which is still to be sorted out if the plugin is really to take advantage of the power added by the comments on the blog.

It's pretty straight forward to install. Download the plugin, upload and activate, goto "wp-admin->options->PermalinksMigration", then re-set your permalink structure to what you want, and you're all done. Sweet.

Get rid of your default "?p=xxx" queries or "/archives/xxx" numeric structures and change it into something that's name based.

WordPress developers really need to change the default value for the wordpress capable installations, or at least give a quick explanation of the SEO effects. WordPress out-of-the-box SEO could be so much better.

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Filed Under: SEO, Wordpress

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  • http://www.frostfox.com/blog Frostfox

    So you suggest name based? Don't you feel that the URL is a little too long, and it's better to have the archive set to numbers or something simpler?

  • filination

    Numeric permalink structure is alot better than query based urls, but name based urls perform best.

    You can search the web for SEO expert advice on this subject. As an example, you might want to have a look at the very simple and straightforward ("Keywords in URL") -
    http://www.webconfs.com/15-minute-seo.php

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  • http://www.gettycash.com GettyCash

    I have changed permalink for my blogs today. Hope that helps.

  • http://Hubshout.com/ Kevin

    I had a hard time getting the permalink thing to work on my MU install. In fact, I had to ditch it altogether because it just wouldn't run with that setting. I know this is hurting SEO, but what else could I do?

  • http://www.MusicForAnimals.org Christian Neeser

    In my case I changed the permastructure of the site to only display the pages in the URL, not the categories. For some reason however, my URL still displays the catgegory.

  • http://www.TNSEO.com Chattanooga SEO

    WordPress developers really need to change the default value for the wordpress capable installations

  • http://techtadka.net abhi
  • http://www.paulphifer.net KansasCitySEO

    Really great post, I especially think it's a fascinating subject of i nterest that only gets better with time. You put a lot of thought into that so thanks for doing that! Take care and I'll be sure to add this to my RSS feed

  • Mark Hewitt

    Thanks alot foe the info, Could it be easier for us newbies.

  • http://www.johnweaverseo.com John Weaver

    This is really good info, but I always just run with the postname as the default permalink. It gets to complicated when you need to change things later.