It has been one of those things you knew you had to do but was near the bottom of your very long to-do list. But after a few days of thinking it over and browsing the web and eventually looking for the right plugins, I managed to migrate my permalink structure to a more keyword rich, SEO friendly layout.
My old permalink structure was the date based /%year%/%monthnum%/%day%/%postname%/ which I still find to be useful for proper chronological organization of one’s journal or news items but I also find my new permalink structure /%category%/%postname%/ to be more keyword rich and easier for both humans and bots.
The Plugin
I am now using Permalink Redirect by Scott Yang to help me simplify the process of migrating permalinks. The plugin worked like a charm. I tested how the plugin would handle backlinks using the old permalink structure and everything redirected properly to the new permalink structure without any noticeable delay.
>Small Hiccup
There was only one problem I encountered while migrating my permalink structure and that was which category name will be used. By default, Wordpress would use the category name with the lowest ID if incase you have multiple categories per post. My theme makes use of different categories as well as some temporary categories which I use as a switch to place posts on the four special feature sections of my theme.
The answer to this minor problem was sCategory Permalink, a plugin by Dmytro Shteflyuk which allows you to tick which category your post will use for your permalink structure. It works by making use of a custom permalink option %scategory% (take note of the extra “s” before the category word).
There is Always a Better Way
What I really wanted was to somehow write a few lines of code on my vhost file on Nginx so redirection would be done on the webserver and not through PHP. For me this is the ideal setup as it puts less load on your server. I also have enough documentation to configure this for Apache but not for Nginx. The next few days were spent looking around for answers, which included several forum postings and reading a lot of Nginx documentation. I gave up after a week so I was left with the plugin option instead but still open to learning how to do it through Nginx but for now I would settle for the plugin.
A person’s quest for knowledge can only be limited by himself and not by anything else. For now this setup works well for me but I know there is better way of doing things.
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Migrating your WordPress Permalinks Structure by Michael Aulia
21 Comments
Glad you get it working! It may not be the best way, but if it works, why not?
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…since banging my head didn’t work, then the plugins should make life a lot easier…
Maybe after a few months I’d be able to crack it and write something about it.
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This is an interesting change that I want to check out myself. Will this really improve SERP?
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hi dropping by
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By the way, I have sent your 100EC’s for participating in my “120 Unique Things About Bloggers”
http://bloggista.com/2008/05/02/120-unique-things-about-bloggers/
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Thanks I got the credits
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hi this is very nice site
Hi all great information here and good thread to comment on.
Can I ask though – how did you get this picked up and into google news?
Very impressive that this blog is syndicated through Google and is it something that is just up to Google or you actively created?
Obviously this is a popular blog with great data so well done on your seo success..
I was told not to put posts into more than a single category. The reason is to avoid duplicate posts, which is a fair reason, I think
Bot will see that your
http://…/internet/firefox3-final/
AND
http://…./browser/firefox3-final/
as separate posts and therefore, duplicate content
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Hi all great information here and good thread to comment on.
Can I ask though – how did you get this picked up and into google news?
Very impressive that this blog is syndicated through Google and is it something that is just up to Google or you actively created?
Obviously this is a popular blog with great data so well done on your seo success..
Wow, the big move. Haven’t done it yet myself for our older blogs mainly because of the problem with backlinks not working anymore. Congrats on your successful migration.
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@Blog2u: 301 redirects will keep the backlinks working.
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Thanks!
@sohbet: thanks for what?
Permalink migration went smoothly on the old domain. The new domain now has a better permalink structure
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archondigital,
I want to change my permalink structure to the form /%category%/%postname%/ but i am afraid it might cause problems. I have used dean’s permalink migration plugin before but i used a date-based permalink format. do you think this plugin will not cause my site to lose traffic if I will change my permalink structure to the above-given form? i’d really appreciate your opinion on this query. thanks in advance
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@jessie: It will not affect your previous SEO efforts.
The permalink redirect plugin I used makes use of 301 redirects. I think the same is true with the plugin you mentioned.
The 301 status tells the browser that your old permalink structure has moved permanently.
301 redirects are very crucial for search engines and other bots as it directs them to update their database with the new structure eventually dropping the old one.
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archondigital,
thanks for the reply bro. i’ll consider changing my permalink structure in the coming weeks.
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Hello admin, nice site ! Good content, beautiful design, thank !,
Thanks for visiting
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Hmmm… I see what you mean
The real post is under supposed to show under the “software” category and the not under “internet”. The one under “browser” was probably generated from the tags which I set up before I published my post.
I already set All-in-one-SEO Pack plugin to put a noindex to my tag archives which I overlooked. Funny I remember already doing that a while back.
Thanks for the reminder
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The spam comment would’ve gotten away the first time.
Doing it twice got you busted