Before writing this article, I was again thinking whether I should change the URL of this blog into a URL without “year/month/day” in it or a URL that looks like this:

selaplana.com/post-title

It’s because I feel guilty to my self that I am helping other bloggers by giving them advice on how to optimize the URL of their blog but then I couldn’t do it in my own blog.

When I started configuring this blog, the very popular structure of URL (they call it the “Permalink”) at that time was the one that this blog is currently using that looks like this:

selaplana.com/yyyy/mm/dd/post-title/

note:  yyyy stands for year, mm for the month, dd for the date

However, by early 2007, bloggers started to realize that the “yyyy/mm/dd” part of the URL was useless in terms of SEO and was just making the URL long. Most of them started to change the old URL into the optimized URL which is the

selaplana.com/post-title.

I wanted to follow what they did, but I was worrying that it might end up to a great mess because I was not a tech savvy and I don’t know much about redirection of old URL to the new URL.

The only mistake that I have done is, I configured the permalink of this blog without considering the SEO side of it.

So, since your blog is still on its early stage, you can change the URL or permalink of your blog without losing anything because some of your blog might have no PR yet, not yet included in the SERP and only few are browsing it.

How to set the Permalink of my New Wordpress blog?

I assume that the Wordpress software or script had been properly installed already in your hosting account. And that you already had created the “.htaccess” and you already had CHMOD it as writable.

So, here’s what you need to do:

1) Login to the Admin of your wordpress blog.

2) Open the “Permalink Settings” Page.

At the left side, you’ll find the links to some pages. Browse down the page and find the “Permalink” which is under the “SETTINGS” section. And click on it.

3) Configure the URL

So, you are already in the “Permalink Settings” page. In the “Custom Settings”, you’ll find 5 options of settings: (1) Default, (2) Day and Name, (3) Month and Name, (4) Numeric, and (5) Custom. Now, choose the “Custom” and on the blank field enter this value:

/%postname%/

4) Save

Then click the “Save Changes” button.

And you’re done.

What does %postname% mean?

It’s actually a Wordpress code which tells the Wordpress script to use the post slug or the title of the post.

For example: If the title of the post you are writing is “Making Money Blog” then the value of the %postname% would be making-money-blog. Thus the final URL of that certain post would be:

http://selaplana.com/making-money-blog/.

Optimizing the Permalink of my old Blog

But what if your blog is as old as mine and has established followings, PR, and better ranking at the SERPs?

Actually, carelessly changing the URL of your blog into this optimized structure of URL will lead to the loss of the PR of every pages of your blog, loss of traffic…. loss of everything.

Why would my blog lose everything if I will carelessly change the URL or Permalink from the old one to this new and optimized URL?

You should take note that the URL

http://selaplana.com/2009/2/1/make-money-online/

is different from the URL

http://selaplana.com/make-money-online/.

In other words, if you’ll point your browser to the first URL, you’ll not be brought into a page with that second URL.

If you already had changed the permalink, then internet users especially those coming from the search engines result pages who are browsing your blog’s content through the old URL with the old permalink structure of your blog will be served with Error 404 Pages and will never find the pages of your blog.

So, to properly implement the optimization of the URL of your old blog, you need to redirect that old URL to the new URL.

Here’s how:

1) Update Permalink

Update the Permalink structure of your blog by doing the steps I enumerated above.

2) Open the .htaccess file

Login to your site’s CPanel. Open the .htaccess file.

3) Edit the .htaccess file

Day and Name Permalink: If you blog is previously using permalink structure:/%year%/%monthnum%/%day%/%postname%/ (uses year/month/day in permalink) then insert this code right after the line that contains “RewriteBase /”.

RewriteRule ^([0-9]{4})/([0-9]{1,2})/([0-9]{1,2})/([^/]+)/?$ http://selaplana.com/$4/ [R=301,L]

But change the “selaplana.com” with the domain of your blog.

Month and Name Permalink: If your blog is previously using permalink option: /%year%/%monthnum%/%postname%/ then insert this code right after the line that contains “RewriteBase /”.

RewriteRule ^([0-9]{4})/([0-9]{1,2})/([^/]+)/?$ http://selaplana.com/$4/ [R=301,L]

Again, change the selaplana.com into the domain used by your blog.

Numeric Permalink: If your blog is previously using the numeric permalink structure with this option: /archives/%post_id% just insert this code right after the line that contains “RewriteBase /”.

RewriteRule ^archives/([0-9]+)/?$ http://selaplana.com/$4/ [R=301,L]

But change the selaplana.com with the domain of your blog.

4) Save the changes.

You should take note that it will not work if you missed the step 1.

More on SEO

This article is still part of our discussion on SEO or in optimizing our blogs for the search engines. Below is the list of our previous articles:

1. What is SEO?
2. How to perform On-Site SEO?
3. How to Optimize Domain and URL for the Search Engines?

• Sign up for PayPal and start accepting credit card payments instantly.
  As the world's number one online payment service, PayPal is the fastest way to open your doors to over 150 million member accounts worldwide.
• Promote your product to high quality, targeted websites and blogs.
  Find effective, influential blogs and highly targeted audiences to advertise.Choose to display your ad across entire blog networks to maximize your exposure to a wide audience.