Wordpress 301 plugin

[scottmccloud]

I'm rebuilding an old blog site where all the posts are actually 'pages', the structure is a total mess as are the URLs.

I'm thinking about restructuring the site and 301ing old pages to new posts which I can structure much more logically and with SEO friendly URLs. Can anyone recommend a good plugin that will assist with this?

Ideally, I'd like something that I could do it in bulk e.g.two columns in a .csv file, one with the old URLs and the other with the new URLs (ideally it would create those pages too).

 

[dee]

i used

Redirection
Manage all your 301 redirects and monitor 404 errors

Version 2.10.1 | By John Godley


Does what it says on the tin and you can import CSV. It works in exactly they way your after in terms of columns also

 

[TallBloke]

I've used the same redirection plugin for years, though only when there's a small number of redirects. Has always worked fine.

 

[benjameen]

This is a good solution but the redirects are done outside WP (in your .htaccess file). This would be better in my opinion as going through WP would increase the time for the redirect to take place

 

[Adam H]

Why would you need to redirect anything ? Are they some weird permalink structure ?

If they are a decent permalink structure you could just re-allocate the posts to the posts post-type ( or a new post-type if you preferred ) and then use the same permalink structure for posts and strip the category base.

If your not technically able to switch post types your self you could use something like this : https://en-gb.wordpress.org/plugins/post-type-switcher/ to change a particular page, into a post which changes the post-type for you.

Only reason I see that not working, is as above, if the permalinks are somewhat funky and could do with being tidied up anyway.

 

[scottmccloud]

Thanks everyone, I think this may be the best/easiest solution (for me anyway, I'm no coder).

If they are a decent permalink structure you could just re-allocate the posts to the posts post-type ( or a new post-type if you preferred ) and then use the same permalink structure for posts and strip the category base.

If your not technically able to switch post types your self you could use something like this : https://en-gb.wordpress.org/plugins/post-type-switcher/ to change a particular page, into a post which changes the post-type for you.

Basically they've built the blog using pages rather than posts, and a mixture of URL types. I'm presuming the safest way of preserving traffic and link juice is to switch them to posts, just keep all the existing URLs but go forward with my preferred /post-name structure on new posts rather than the /p=123 type.?

 

[Adam H]

Could you give me an example of the the current page URLs and post URLs Scott ?

If they are the old p=123 then you should be able to get away with moving them all to "posts" with the addon i posted above. Then changing to your preferred permalink structure as the ID's should remain the same. Wordpress with All in One SEO Pack or Yoast will take care of the rest. Without the need to redirect. Make sure you've got your sitemap setup too.

 

[tifosi]

If they're all in the non-permalink structure then there's an argument to take an initial seo hit and focus on the posts as fully-qualified permalink urls.

Really depends on the quantity, and how much work was done prior to that, and what webmaster tools say about indexing quality & analytics about traffic. If you have a few that are showing regular traffic then 301 them.

If you don't have traffic, then stick analytics on for a couple of weeks. Will soon show what's worth salvaging. All about not making a rod for your own back.

Make sure you move the site to https if not already done so during the process, and update webmaster / search console and analytics to https. And submitting the new sitemap.

Not a massive fan of yoast thesedays, prefer TheSEOFramework.

 

[TallBloke]

Not a massive fan of yoast thesedays, prefer TheSEOFramework.

I've been meaning to try out TheSEOFramework ....presumably you're finding it performs well enough?

 

[tifosi]

Yes, increasingly good reputation.Lightweight, no ads, no bloat. Essentially unbranded. Good for client work. Prefer to deal with analytics & sitemap elsewhere.