3 WordPress Plugins to Safely Change Your Permalink Structure
In my previous post on “WordPress SEO Tutorial: The Best SEO Permalink Structure,” I realize that I had left out a major point to be taken: if you’re changing your old permalink structure to a new one, your site will LOSE the links love from other sites that have linked to you. Your site will NOT get credits for all the inbound links linking to your OLD permalink blog (instead of the new one).
BUT–luckily, there’s a WordPress plugin to fix this problem. And without further ado, here it is:
Permalinks Migration Plugin for WordPress: “With this plugin, you can safely change your permalink structure without breaking the old links to your website,and even doesn’t hurt your google pagerank.”
You can find details on how to change your old permalink structure of your blog to a new one there. And, yes, the author of that plugin also recommend /%category%/postname%/ as the permalink structure for your SEO blog–just like what I had posted on WordPress SEO Tutorial: The Best SEO Permalink Structure.
Also, there is a plugin called Permalink Redirect WordPress Plugin. It’s a “WordPress plugin that replies a 301 permanent redirect, if requested URI is different from entry’s (or archive’s) permalink. It is used to ensure that there is only one URL associated with each blog entry.”Yet, another one is called Angsuman’s Permanent Redirect. This plugin works “[w]hen a post or static page (in WP context) is fetched (using its permalink) for viewing the plugin checks if the post has a “redirect†custom field set. If it is set then a permanent redirect status is sent to the client/browser indicating that the post has permanently moved to the location (URL) specified in the value of “redirectâ€. So the viewer is automatically moved to the new location.”
*I personally recommend Permalinks Migration Plugin for WordPress if you are going to ‘permanently’ change your old permalink structure to a new one (to /%category%/postname%/ I hope :).
And there you have it, the “3 WordPress Plugins to Safely Change Your Permalink Structure”
w/out losing any link love 
. Best of luck to your permalink transition 
. O.K. then adieu.
More Related SEO Articles:
WordPress SEO Tutorial: The Best SEO Permalink Structure
WordPress SEO Tutorials
The ULTIMATE META-TAGS PLUGIN for WordPress
That is a useful plugin! I will upload it onto my site in a while. And I might link this article in my first linking article.
I forgot to ask: which plugin did you use?
Hey, thank you. Hope these plugins help you to ’safely’ change your permalink structure. Also, be prepared that your new URL for each post won’t get spidered and replaced the old structure right away. But in the ‘little’ long-run, you’ll see that your new permalink structure will get your site spider ‘easily’ & ‘quickly’ by the search engine bots, giving you more pages in the index and increasing your blog to be found on the search engine =P.
M.T. Nguyen
–a.k.a. The SEO Blogger–
[…] be sure to check out my post on “3 WordPress Plugins to Safely Change Your Permalink Structure” if you’re going to change to your blog’s old permalinks to a new permalink […]
I agree that changing your permalink structure is a must, but everyone seems to be suggesting /%category%/%postname%/. That’s fine if you’ve been blogging for a long time, but if you’re just starting, be careful about using this.
Using %category% isn’t sensible, unless you are very sure that your categories won’t change. I fell into this trap - as my blog matures, I need to tweak the categories, which would break my permalinks.
[…] be sure to check out my post on “3 WordPress Plugins to Safely Change Your Permalink Structure” if you’re going to change to your blog’s old permalinks to a new permalink […]
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is the type of thing that these plugins do required if one is changing from the Default Wordpress (i.e. ?p=%post_id%) permalink to a custom permalink? I am currently using Wordpress 2.3.2 and have just changed from the Default permalink structure to /%category%/postname%/ and it seems to be working just fine without having used one of these plugins.
Perhaps, you didn’t read the first part closely: if you change the permalink/URL, all the links from other sites pointing to the existing URL will be LOST, because you now have a new permalink. Thus, you need a plugin to 301 permanent redirect all the ‘old’ default URL to the new one.
I hope that explains it for you
.
Actually, the default URL will still work, even if you change the permalink settings. For example, you can access this post using:
http://theseoblogger.com/seo-blogs/wordpress/wordpress-plugins-to-change-your-permalink-structure/
or
http://theseoblogger.com/?p=23
WordPress will serve the same page with both URLs. The default structure always works - that’s what I think Simon was saying.
I think it’s bad SEO however - I think Google will consider these to be two separate pages and will keep the PageRank of each separate. You really want Google to see it as one page - so the redirection plugin is necessary for this reason…
Oh, yeah, while you’re at it. Get the “Redirection Plugin” by UrbanGiraffe.com: it’s hands down/thumbs up the best redirection plugin/permalink migration tool there is for WordPress… plus a lot of other features too if you know how to ‘harness’ them
.
I should have been clearer. If you do a Google search for ’site:simondalfonso.id.au’, you will find a list of my blog posts, all with the old default permalink structure. Click on one of those, and it should take you to the post still, even though I don’t have a permalink redirection plugin installed.
when, for example, I paste the following URL into my browser: http://www.simondalfonso.id.au/blog/?p=30, as well as getting the correct post, it seems to automatically place me at the corresponding custom permalink URL: http://www.simondalfonso.id.au/blog/computing/blogging/wordpress-plugin-wp-vcard/.
So it seems like something is being done by Wordpress here to the effect that if you have a custom permalink structure system and you use the default structure to try and access a post, it will automatically place you at the post *with* the correct, corresponding custom permalink. Like Wordpress already knows that by http://www.simondalfonso.id.au/blog/?p=30 I mean http://www.simondalfonso.id.au/blog/computing/blogging/wordpress-plugin-wp-vcard.
—
I just checked something which leads me to believe that the feature which I talk about has been recently introduced into Wordpress.
I tested what I am saying with a blog running Wordpress 2.1.3 and if I go to a post with the default permalink structure: e.g. http://www.sustainablecitiesnet.com/?p=338 I get the right page delivered but the URL remains the old default permalink URL.
The custom permalink URL currently in place is http://www.sustainablecitiesnet.com/research/research-australian-cities-and-socio-economic-deprivation-report/
My blog at http://www.simondalfonso.id.au/blog is running 2.3.2
It seems that Wordpress 2.3 addresses these types of issues: http://markjaquith.wordpress.com/2007/09/25/wordpress-23-canonical-urls/
Hi Simon et al, that is correct: starting with 2.3x, WordPress had fixed the canonical issue of www and non-www, plus integrate the permalink redirect, as well.
*Also, as noted, I wrote this post back in May 2007, months before the new WP 2.3 came out, which I think is in November 2007. Anyway, for any other form of redirection (e.g. affiliate link cloaking/redirection, I recommend you get the “Redirection Plugin” by UrbanGiraffe.com (by John Godley =).
Regards,
~M.T.~
a.k.a The SEO Blogger
P.S. I have just upgraded this blog from WP 2.2x to WP 2.3.3 =P.