Entries Tagged 'urls' ↓

I started noticing the following message within my Adwords account several days ago:

Important Change to URL Policy Enforcement
Starting in April, display URLs for new ads will be required to match their destination / landing page URLs, without exception. Please adjust your URLs accordingly when creating new ads.

When I first noticed this I was a bit concerned, thinking that the rule applied to the destination URL you enter within your Adwords account, which isn’t necessarily the landing page that users land on. As I read more I was much relieved to find out that it actually only applies to just the landing page that users end up on. So the new rule basically means that whatever users see displayed below your ad, should be the same as where they actually end up. This rule makes a lot of sense and I do agree with Google’s reasons for implementing it, “efforts to present relevant results“, it will however affect a lot of people. John Jonas has written a great post about how to deal with these new rules.

I just barely changed all my blog post permalinks on this blog from the longer /blog/%year%/%monthnum%/%day%/%postname%/ to the much simpler and shorter /%postname%/. I have been wanting to do this for quite some time, but was worried about the loss in traffic I may experience due to old links pointing to my old URLs.

It’s very easy to change the permalink structure in Wordpress. You just go to admin panel Options->Permalinks, change your permalink structure to your new desired structure, then click the Update Permalink Structure button. The problem with this, however, is that any old links poining to your old URL will become broken, which will cause a loss in direct traffic from those links and a loss in search engine rankings that old URLs may have occupied.

The solution is to do a 301 redirect from your old URLs to your new ones, that way any traffic directed to your old URLs will automatically be redirected to the new ones, and Google will recognize that your pages have permanently moved and will update their index accordingly. I used the Permalinks Migration Plugin for Wordpress that easily accomplishes all this. Now old posts such as my learn how to make money from blogging post can be accessed through either its old URL its new URL.

Here is a little step by step guide if you would like to change your permalink structure and not lose any traffic or search engine rankings.

1. Download and unzip the Permalinks Migration Plugin.

2. Upload the file deans_permalinks_migration.php into your wp-content/plugins/ directory.

3. In Wordpress go to admin panel->options->PermalinksMigration and enter in the old permanlink structure of your site.

4. Go to admin panel->options->Permalinks and change to the new permalink structure of your choice.

After completing these four steps all of you old URLs will automatically be forwarded to their appropriate new URL.