Trying to avoid SEO suicide

Hi all,

Newbie here with a couple of questions.

My blog is currently running WP 2.3.3 with "ugly" permalinks. I would like to change to "pretty" permalinks, probably /%postname%/. I've seen lots of plugins to help with the switchover (so as not to get dinged too badly by Google). Does anyone have any experience with this? What have you used, and with the plugins, do you still need to update .htaccess?

Also, my blog is set in a sub directory called wordpress. Originally I was thinking I would have an index page at the root of the domain then a blog, forum, gallery, etc. in sub-directories. However, now that the blog is doing well, I just want to stick with the blog and that's it.

From an SEO standpoint. What makes the most sense.

1. Move wordpress and all blog info to root. or;

2. update .htaccess with 301 redirect so that all traffic to root domain just points to subfolder wordpress?

url is www dot 993C4S dot com slash wordpress (sorry, first post, can't do links yet.

Thanks,

John

 

Yes. You can move everything to your root or public_html folder but you will have to change the blog address in your options settings to http://www.domain.com instead of http://www.domain.com/blog/

Options>>Permalinks is the one to change the permalinks structure. Make sure your .htaccess file allows it and it chmod 777.

Hope this helps.

Col

 

Col,

Thanks (can't quote your post because of the live links),

Sorry if I wasn't clear. I know I can move it to the root, and that I need to change the options settings for the blog address and that I change permalinks in option too.

What I really want to know is am I committing SERP death by doing so. Or, if my htaccess file is written correctly, am I okay?

I'm getting decent traffic for some of my keywords (increasing weekly) and I have some backlinks (but all with "ugly" permalink structure). Don't want to lose backlinks, ranking, etc.


John

 

A 301 redirect will be fine for all of these things.

 

I've decided not to move my entire folder to the root. Instead I just moved the index.php and .htaccess file to the route. I then changed the proper settings in the option panel of Wordpress.

Is there anything I need to do to .htaccess at this point for the move of the index.php? Or, do I now only have to worry about making the mods to the htaccess file when I switch over Permalink structure?

John