Changing Wordpress Permalinks (new blog post urls)

Changing the permalinks on EXISTING blog posts is NOT to be taken lightly. When you change your blog “permalinks” structure, all existing blog post urls will change….and anywhere they are linked to in the old way will cause your readers to get a 404 Page Not Found Error (that’s BAD!). Here’s how I easily changed my blog post urls (permalinks) for ALL my blog posts without my readers getting 404 errors AND without losing my social shares counts for each post or my Pinterest repins and pins for each post.

Many, many years ago, when I started this blog here at PotPieGirl.com, it was pretty normal to have more stuff in your blog post urls than just your blog name and your post name.

For example, my blog posts here have always had the year and the month in the permalinks for each blog post that reflected the year and the month the post was originally published.

I wish I knew back then what I know now… sheesh!

Here’s my quick story about CHANGING my blog permalinks (post urls) from long and ugly… to pretty permalinks.

For years, I’ve been using a blog post url structure (ie, “permalinks”) that included the year and the month of the post.

Meaning, my blog post urls have always looked like this:

https://www.potpiegirl.com/2017/04/my-blog-post

See the year and the month in there?

Yeah, I detest that and have wanted to change it for YEARS, but honestly, I was quite nervous about it (I am PRONE to breaking things! lol!)

Each “slash” in a blog post url is another file deeper into your site structure and I think it makes it harder for Google to index my site the way I want them to.

Plus, I have some “evergreen” posts here on my site that even though they were published years ago, they are still relevant today.

But when people see the year “2008” in the blog post url, I think it really hurts my CTR from Google search results.

I just wanted my blog posts to have clean “pretty” urls like this:

https://www.potpiegirl.com/my-blog-post

But this is no simple little task – there is room for TONS of ways to mess it up and cause endless 404 errors on my WordPress site.

So, my very first stop before doing anything:

I went directly to this guy for WordPress help

He knows everything about WordPress and can fix anything – highly recommended!

You’ve heard people say, “I’ve gotta guy!”

Well, I DO “got a guy” – and he is my WordPress HERO!

I’m a blogger – an affiliate marketer – I am NOT a coder…lol!

So, I checked with him and realized my two biggest concerns when changing my blog post permalinks were:

Making sure all OLD urls redirect to the NEW urls
Making sure I retained all my previous social share counts

important to know:

If you change your blog post url it becomes a NEW web page and you can lose ALL your social share counts!

All those hard-earned repins and tweets and Facebook likes…. gone!

Thank GOODNESS I use this social sharing button plugin – it protected me from losing all my social share counts!

It ALSO protects me from people stealing my content – more on that below.

To be honest – I really dreaded DOING this and starting the process to change my blog permalinks – but I knew I’d be super happy when it was DONE.

Once I got my personal BoardBooster Strategy Guide out that everyone was asking for, I decided to just jump in and DO it – and get these urls changed.

PotPieGirl Blog Posts You Might Enjoy:

As I said previously, the biggest worry when you change the url of a web page, is that all current links TO that web page will give a 404 “Page Not Found” error after you change your permalinks.

So, you have to change the permalinks to how you want them.

Then, you have to take a few more steps to be sure that all your old permalinks (blog post urls) redirect to the NEW post url.

Sounds pretty intimidating, doesn’t it?

Seriously, who wants to totally BREAK their blog, right?

But, I finally sucked it up and went for it.

Turns out that it was super easy – like super DOOPER easy.

Since I have the Yoast SEO plugin installed, I followed their instructions to change my blog post permalinks here.

Then I did the little extra thing to prevent my blog posts from all giving 404 errors – and presto-chango… DONE!

The next thing I needed to do was to ensure all my social shares for the old urls still counted for the new urls.

THANK GOODNESS I use THIS Social Sharing Plugin!

That plugin made sure my blog posts did NOT lose their previous share count. YAY!

One little click in the “Advanced Settings” on the “Share Recovery” tool, and PRESTO CHANGO – that was done for me, too!

stfi.re links stealing your traffic?

Also something that might interest y’all…

If your site has been affected by those stfi.re links where it looks like their sharing YOUR blog post url, but it’s really not (tho it is an exact copy of your web page!)

My social sharing plugin also has a little on/off switch in the Advanced Settings called “Frame Buster”.

Just turn that on and no one can use those stfi.re link thingys on your site!

Pretty awesome, right!

I knew it was a great plugin when I first started using it, but now that I see all the ways it protects me AND protects my social share counts… well, I’m fan for life.

You can check out the social sharing plugin I use here.

Anyway…

So I am now SUPER glad that is done.

I’m still checking around in my sidebars and in previous posts to change interlinked blog post urls to the new permalink structure, but it’s not totally necessary to do that.

Each old url redirects perfectly to the new url.

Easy-peasy!

All that’s left now, is for Google to catch up with the new post url structure and reindex everything with the new permalinks.

To help that along….

Here are some other PotPieGirl.com posts you may enjoy {grin}:

I also have quite a few posts that are Google SEO posts that are “oldies but goodies”…

And since I’m linking to everything in this post…

Why not follow me on Pinterest?

If YOU have WordPress Issues, Questions or Problems:

You NEED to check with MY WordPress Guy!

He’s awesome!