How To Change Your WordPress Permalink Structure for Better SEO
February 23, 2008
With me just getting into blogging a few weeks ago, there are still a lot of aspects of blogging I don’t understand clearly. One of those areas is the permalink structure of your posts. I knew from reading around other blogs that there were ways to improve your SEO by changing the structure, but I really didn’t understand it or want to change it for fear I would goof something up.
Well fortunately in my travels tonight, I found a video that explained it very clearly and also shows you how to use a plugin to make sure your old links follow your new permalink structure. For instance I have some links ranked pretty high in Google right now (6,11,21) and I don’t want someone clicking those old links and getting an error page. The plugin that is shown in the videos will keep those old links coming to the right place.
For example my old link listed at Google looks like this:
http://gregswift.com/tipsandtricks/?p=6
After changing my permalink structure the new link now looks like this:
http://gregswift.com/tipsandtricks/asd-then-and-now/
Even though the old link is still showing at Google, when someone clicks on it they go to the page with the new link. This is much more search engine friendly and describes the actual subject of the post.
Keep in mind this video is aimed at self hosted Wordpress blogs with your own domain so you can create and edit some files and upload them to the server. Everything is explained in the video. You’ll want to download and activate the plugin first. Then follow along with the video and you’ll be all set!
Download Dean’s Permalinks Migration Plugin Here
This and other great video tutorials can be found on the TubeTorial website here: http://www.tubetorial.com/
Post your comments and let me know if you got it working OK. Don’t be afraid to try it, if anything goes wrong you can simply change back to your original settings.
Have fun!
blog, permalink redirect, permalink structure, wordpress
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February 23rd, 2008 at 5:45 pm
Greg,
Don’t know what happened, but when I visited this morning your whole blog was in shadow except that Tube Tutorial video. (I’d already closed your popover box too.) The bad part is there was no way to close the tutorial video, so I closed my browser and came back.
Anyway, if you use the All In One SEO plugin you can create SEO friendly permalinks, custom title and tags for your blog posts.
However, I can see how there would be an advantage to having this plugin so if you change the name of an article, the link would still go to that article.
That’s why I’m stuck with
http://stayhomedads.com/news/b.....iche-blog/
When I have changed the title of the post to Watch Me As I Create a Niche Website!
I’ll look into this plugin for sure.
Best Regards,
Charles
February 23rd, 2008 at 6:39 pm
Hi Charles,
I appreciate you letting me know about the problem.
Turns out there’s some conflict with the MBS hover form. I had to close my browser and check the page again because I had it set to only open once until the browser is closed. So I did see what you were referring to.
I’ve disabled the hover popup until I can figure out what’s going on. I’m sure it has something to do either with the video I posted or perhaps the Sezwho plugin. Other than that everything remained the same.
If you hear of anyone else having issues with the MBP hover popup, let me know and thanks again.