Change Permalink Structure Then Redirect Old Permalinks To New Ones

Default WordPress permalink structure is not what Google suggests you to use. Search engines like simple permalink structure i.e. your website name followed by the post name.

Bloggers generally stick to old permalink structure because when the permalink structure is changed, the websites pointing links to you starts to send users on 404 error pages. Same in case of search engines, they sometimes takes months to update the old URLs to new ones on their SERPs.

Changing permalink structure is easy but pointing old permalinks to new ones is a little bit tricky. But no worries, in this lesson we will show you the easiest way to do so.

Switching to SEO friendly permalink structure:

Visit your admin area dashboard Settings -> Permalinks screen and select post name permalink option. Save changes and your website will start using this new permalink structure on all posts.

Directing old permalinks to new ones:

There are two ways: You can either do this by editing your .htaccess file located in your website’s root directory. Thanks to Yoast for this tool that allows you to generate redirects for old permalinks to new ones based on your domain.

All you got to do is generate redirect code and the paste it in your website’s .htaccess file.

Another way of directing permalinks is Permalink Finder Plugin. Simply install and activate it and the plugin will detect what permalink WordPress cannot find. Before your website generates 404 error the plugin the tries to locate the post and yes, it works.

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