Should I change Permalinks?

[JohnPeters]

I have a site that is doing well in rankings, and its also been accepted in to Google news.

I have around 800 article live on the site.

My current permalink structure is -  /%year%/%monthnum%/%postname%/

What I am wondering, would it be better to change it to - /%postname%/

The reason I ask is that most of the well ranking sites and sites built by SEO companies all seem to have the /%postname%/

Will I get a benefit from changing this? I know that I could republish content have the /%postname%/ permalinks.

Are there any other benefits?

If the is a benefit, I'd perefr to change it as soon as possible before the site grows even more

Thanks in advance for anyone who can help

[JohnPeters]

I have just done a test with another wordpress site I run.

I changed the permalinks and the old URLs got redirected to the new URLs.

I checked if the redirect was a 301 and it was.

I dont have the redirection plugin installed.

It appears as though wordpress does this automatically.

[JohnPeters]

Ok great. I hope so lol.

I will be moving hosting from a shared one to a VPS and use CDN so we can really speed up the site.

I am guessing that the best time to do the permalink change will be when we move servers.

Anything you suggest I should watch out for?

[sergio_redondo]

Hi John,

There is a plugin that allows you to edit permalinks for single posts, so you can decide what kind of permalink structure you want for each post from now. Here you have the link:

http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/permalink-editor/

However, as Marcus says, if your redirects are well done (and redirect plugin lets you do it), you don't have to worry about it.

Sergio

[JohnPeters]

To be honest, I'm scared to change the permalinks now!

Terrified the the site will take a beating and drop rankings

The wordpress site is built using Genesis framework and Ive got Yoast SEO plugin installed.

I cant see it as simply just change the permalinks in wordpress and everythng works lol I wish it was that simple.

Does the redirection pluggin automatically create 301's?

I am sure that wordpress has that built in if I am correct. I recall changing permalinks in past wordpress sites and redrects happened

[Marcus_Miller]

Hey, that is not possible with the default settings although there may be a plugin that could extend the functionality.

You would not see any problem from making a change in your permalink structure with the redirection plugin in place and whilst you may have a small bump whilst things switch over, if your URLs are getting crazy long then any slashes and characters you can remove is going to work in your favour.

Your best bet is likely to go one way or the other and personally, if you feel the date elements bring nothing to the table then I would make the change in the spirit of moving forwards.

_* I did come across an old plugin called Advanced Permalinks but lots of folks seem to have problems with it. _

[JohnPeters]

Wow, great thanks Sergio. I have not seen the quoted info.

I understand totally, we always try to look at it from the users point of view.

We do not use the date archives on the site, so having the content in date folders I cant see adding any benefit.

I think the site can do a great deal better with the rankings certainly, but it is on the way up

We get a few interactions, but not many. Would like a lot more

Some of the URLs are getting very long also, so that another reason we would like to change the permalinks

I have also noticed that some of the older posts are dropping down the rankings. It appears a little faster then normal. This may not be anything to do with the permalinks, but its a thought i have had

It would be great if we could just somehow start all the posts from now onwards using the /%postname%/ structure. And all the past articles staying the same URL.

I dont see why we would have to change the already existing URL's of the past articles.

Is that possible do you know on a wordpress site?

[sergio_redondo]

Hi John,

If you look at SEOmoz PRO Dashboard On-page Resports, one issue they consider as Low Importance Factor is 'Minimal Subfolders in the URL'. They explain it as follows:

<dt style="color: #5e5e5e; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal;">Explanation</dt>

<dd style="color: #5e5e5e; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal;">

The quantity of subfolders in a URL appears to correlate to rankings. URLs with fewer trailing slashes perform better than those with more. Additionally, search engine representatives have recommended that excessive, subfolders in a URL string may be a signal that the page is very deep in a site's structure and may be less valuable/worthwhile to crawl, index and rank.

</dd>

<dt style="color: #5e5e5e; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal;">Recommendation</dt>

<dd style="color: #5e5e5e; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal;">

Rewrite the URL to include no more than 3 subfolder levels (4 trailing slashes following the domain name)

</dd>

However, I agree with Marcus. Think about your users and your website needs. Forget about Google and its way of crawling, indexing an so on. If you see a good performance from your users, what is bad?

Consider the following:

• Is your traffic good for your expectations?
• Is your traffic increasing through time?
• Do your users interact?
• Is your website well considered by your users?

If all your answers are YES, then keep on going. You´re doing very well.

If not, consider if minimizing subfolders could improve your website's experience (at all stages).

Hope it helps.

Sergio

[JohnPeters]

Hi Marcus,

Thanks for your reply.

I noticed that some other big news sites dont use the date in the URL's, but the posts show the date.

My concern is that Google may lower the rankings over time as it knows these pages are time sensitive.

Thanks for the redirection plugin link. We currently use that on the site.

[Marcus_Miller]

I don't really think this is an SEO question as such and lots of well ranked sites have the year and month in the URL.

Really, it all depends on what works best for you and your users.

• Are the pages and stories date specific?
• Will having just the page names make for better looking URLs?

Try to think about this outside of the SEO mindset and do whatever is best for the content and your users as you are not going to get any kind of noticeable SEO boost from removing the date from the URLs.

But, if you do decide to do this, and assuming this is WordPress from the terminology, then if you install the redirection plugin it will create automatic 301 redirections for any page names you change so it could save you a whole load of work.

Obviously, this is not a specific answer, only you can provide that, but think of it not as an SEO fix but think of your users and how this would effect them in a positive way.

Hope that helps!
Marcus

References:

http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/redirection/