Plugin to change permanent WordPress URL’s without hurting SEO

Sometimes it’s necessary to change the permanent URL of posts or pages on your WordPress site after the page has already been indexed by Google. Permanent URL’s are the address you see when you are on a page. By default WordPress starts with “ugly URLs” that look like this: http://comoblogs.com/?page_id=10

Google likes pretty URLs better (and so do people for that matter) and you can easily change them by going to settings and using the permalink option. But if your pages are indexed by Google changing the links could be dangerous because Google won’t be able to find your posts anymore. You want to use a 301 redirect when you change the URL of any webpage, but how exactly do you do that?

With WordPress it is now incredibly easy to change any permanent links you want without upsetting the SEO gods too much. I use the redirection plugin by John Godley to manage all of my redirections on a WordPress site. The plugin has many options including different ways for it to work. That way if it conflicts with another plugin you can easily change how it works so it doesn’t. It also provides stats on how often the broken links are hit and redirected as well as some other cool stuff.

If you are looking for an easy and safe way to change the permanent URL structure of an old WordPress post or page then I would try this first (or now if you’ve tried something that didn’t work).

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