Hi I have a wordpress-blog, that uses the standard link format "domain/year/date/post-title To optimize my posts I could eliminate the "year/date" part to have "domain/posts/post-title" (or maybe even "domain/post-title"). So my questions is: All my inbound links would link to a non-existing post, but is it worth the taking the hit? Will the change in url for the posts make much of a difference?
I think there are wordpress plugins available to change and redirect the permalinks. Try using them if that works.
I agree. You need to do some research on their main web site and possible ask the question there. Actually there are a lot of pluggins invited
I am not concerned how to do this. My problem is, that links already built on other websites,articles blog comments that are leading to inner pages, will link to a page that no longer exists. Also, does it really matter much if the url is "domain/year/date/post-title" or "domain/post-title". But, as you say, I can redirect (or a re-write rule), but can this be done without having the search engine "think less" of my pages?
If you 301 the link juice will pass to the new pages. It isn't anything new what you are doing, the SEs know about this and have worked their way around it. As long as you 301 all the old URLs to the new ones you should be fine. Might loose some rankings for a couple of weeks but if you do it properly should be back up in no time. Do not rewrite URLS! Use the 301
so 301 all the posts..doh...maybe there's a plugin for this ;-). All inner pages are currently PR n/a, so no big deal loosing some pr for a couple of weeks. thanks for the help
Doesn't matter if the pages are PR0 you don't know if someone has linked to any of your posts and it still hasn't shown up, so just to be safe make sure you redirect each and every single post, take your time and double check and for a while keep an eye on the 404 reports.
I know someone has linked to some post. I have also myself done some linkbuilding for inner pages...otherwise it wouldn't be a problem. Now I just need someone to tell me how to do the 301 re-write rule....the guys in the Apache forum are not so quick to reply ;-)
What hit? If you change your URL structure, just use the Redirection plugin for WordPress and let it automatically forward your old links to their new locations for you. You won't lose anything (not even rankings or PageRank), and if you DO see a loss in your rankings, it'll only be temporary as the search engines' data centers synch up to reflect the current links across their networks.
i really wouldn't bother changing the date format. it's just not worth it. you probably wont lose ranking, but you're not going to gain anything either.
Actually he can gain - he'll be increasing the weight of the keywords in his URLs since there'll be less for the search engines to get through to find them.
If your blog is ranking well I would leave it alone but if its not then go for it. You would have to spend time fixing the links or google will hate your site!
Yes, it will. Even if it's not in the rankings (assuming everything else has already been optimized to the hilt), at the very least it'll be a lot easier for people to remember when they tell their friends about the site, or try to type it into the browser's address bar from memory, and so forth.
Wordpress is smart enough. Just do it, shouldn't be something to think about. It will be redirected to the newest permalink.
i am sure you will find some good article on how to optimize blogs like wordpress and stuff like that. as far as i remember, there was something involing H1,H2,H3 an d H4. Good Luck !
i don't really agree, people don't remember web addresses longer than 2/3 words anyway. if i want a friend to see it, i'd IM or email them it. i suppose it would be slightly beneficial to shorten your URL's, but what i am saying is the potentially positive impact is not worth the change.
erm, nothing but years of experience. look man, i'm not going to argue with you but if you think that a couple of extra numbers in a URL is going to make any impact on anything, you're mistaken. if the content is all present and correct, it won't need much more optimisation to get good rankings and traffic.