Moz Q&A is closed.
After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.
Should I Change My Blog Permalinks to Remove The Date
-
Hi All
Thank you in advance for any help.
Last year a website was moved to multisite and the permalinks for the blog posts were changed to include a category, the year, the month and day.
As a result most of the page URL's are flagged as too long.
A number of the pages are receiving good traffic, so my question is whether just to leave them as they are or to change the permalinks?
My gut feeling is to take the short term hit and change the permalinks, but I thought I'd take the advice of the forum before doing so.
Many Thanks
-
If you’re considering changing your permalinks, it’s important to keep them concise yet functional. For an example of clean and effective permalink structure, you can check out.
-
Hi All, just to check in on this question?
-
Hi @DigitalProgress ,
If the current URLs are performing well in terms of traffic and rankings, it's generally better to leave them as they are. Changing permalinks can cause a temporary drop in traffic unless proper 301 redirects are implemented for every affected page.
If the URLs are truly problematic (e.g., causing issues with SEO or user experience), ensure you map out redirects carefully to minimise the impact. Ultimately, if the structure works and there's no major issue, sticking with it might be the safer option.
-
@DigitalProgress In my opinion, you need to change the url of your articles and removed dates from it and than redirect your old URL to new one
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
How Good or Bad is having a blog feed(s) on the homepage?
Hello everyone, I was wondering if I can get some different opinion about having a blog feed on the homepage. Image, title, excerpt I have several feeds on mine which I do not believe it hurts and has helped my rankings but I wanted some superior SEO brains to weigh in. https://www.brightvessel.com Is it good for SEO? When would it be bad? How many posts would be considered too much? On my blog, have the most recent posts which have some of the same feeds. Which is making me question the duplicated content. https://www.brightvessel.com/blog/ Thanks! Judd
On-Page Optimization | | brightvessel0 -
Google Webmaster Guideline Change: Human-Readable list of links
In the revised webmaster guidelines, google says "[...] Provide a sitemap file with links that point to the important pages on your site. Also provide a page with a human-readable list of links to these pages (sometimes called a site index or site map page)." (Source: https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/35769?hl=en) I guess what they mean by this is something like this: http://www.ziolko.de/sitemap.html Still, I wonder why they say that. Just to ensure that every page on a site is linked and consequently findable by humans (and crawlers - but isn't the XML sitemap for those and gives even better information)? Should not a good navigation already lead to every page? What is the benefit of a link-list-page, assuming you have an XML sitemap? For a big site, a link-list is bound to look somewhat cluttered and its usefulness is outclassed by a good navigation, which I assume as a given. Or isn't it? TL;DR: Can anybody tell me what exactly is the benefit of a human-readable list of all links? Regards, Nico
On-Page Optimization | | netzkern_AG0 -
What to do with removed pages and 404 error
I recently removed about 600 'thin' pages from my site which are now showing as 404 errors in WMT as expected. As I understand it I should just let these pages 404 and eventually they'll be dropped from the index. There are no inbound links pointing at them so I don't need to 301 them. They keep appearing in WMT as 404's though so should I just 'mark as fixed' until they stop appearing? Is there any other action I need to take?
On-Page Optimization | | SamCUK0 -
Best way to separate blogs, media coverage, and press releases on WordPress?
I'm curious what some of your thoughts are on the best way to handle the separation of blog posts, from press releases stories, from media coverage. With 1 WordPress installation, we're obviously utilizing the Posts for these types of content. It seems obvious to put press releases into a "press release" category and media coverage into a "media coverage" category.... but then what about blog posts? We could put blog posts into a "blog" category, but I hate that. And what about actual blog categories? I tried making sub-categories for the blog category which seemed like it was going to work, until the breadcrumbs looked all crazy. Example: Homepage > Blog > Blog > Sub-Category Homepage = http://www.example.com First 'Blog' = http://www.example.com/blog Second 'Blog' = http://www.example.com/category/blog Sub-Category = http://www.example.com/category/blog/sub-category This just doesn't seem very clean and I feel like there has to be a better solution to this. What about post types? I've never really worked with them. Is that the solution to my woes? All suggestions are welcome! EDIT: I should add that we would like the URL to contain /blog/ for blog posts /media-coverage/ for media coverage, and /press-releases/ for press releases. For blog posts, we don't want the sub-category to be in the URL.
On-Page Optimization | | Philip-DiPatrizio0 -
Does Hiding the article´s date in a blog affect SEO?
We are running a blog and would like to hide date, as users find the article less interesting if they are dated more than 2 years ago. Will hiding the article´s date in a blog affecto SEO? Thanks in advance u2cJxsr
On-Page Optimization | | goperformancelabs0 -
How To Change Wordpress Category Title
My categories are indexed and I want to change the category page title. At present it just defaults to the category name but I want to set a different page title. For example I want the category to be 'Motor Cars' but I want the category page title to be 'Buy Motor Cars - New And Used'. How can I do this?
On-Page Optimization | | SamCUK0 -
How to properly remove pages and a category from Google's index
I want to remove this category http://www.webdesign.org/web-design-news-all/ and all the pages in that category (e.g. http://www.webdesign.org/web-design-news-all/7386.html ) from Google's index. I used the following string in the "Reomval URS" section in Google Webmaster Tools: http://www.webdesign.org/web-design-news-all/* is that correct or I better use http://www.webdesign.org/web-design-news-all/ ? Thanks in advance.
On-Page Optimization | | VinceWicks0 -
How long does it take for Google to see Changes to a site?
Hi, I have a low PR site (PR 1) that I am starting to work on. Ingeneral when you make changes to my site how long would it take Google to recognize and index those changes? The reason I am wondering is because the site I am working on had a lot of duplicate content (around 700 pages), I got rid of it all, but I wasn't sure how long it would take Google to spider all these pages and re-index them since the site is low PR. Thanks, Ken
On-Page Optimization | | Jason_3420