Performed major surgery on the blog: Changed Permalinks and SEO Plugin

Previously, Naiba wrote an article introducingWordPress Best Permalink Settings_Which Permalink Structure is Best. The article mentioned that the best Permalink choices for WordPress are numeric, post name, or custom. Yesterday at midnight,NaibabijiI changed the SEO Plugin from All in One SEO Pack to Yoast SEO. During the Yoast SEO setup wizard, it suggested changing the original numeric Permalink to a post name Permalink. After sleeping on it, I decided to change the website's Permalink for the long term, as shown in the image below:

Reasons for changing Permalinks

Changing a website's Permalink is a very serious matter from an SEO perspective; if not done properly, it can lead to a reduction in search engine ranking weight. Based on the following reasons, I ultimately decided to make the change.

1. Numeric Permalinks have low recognition
2. WordPress WeChat Mini ProgramArticle redirection not supported for numeric permalinks
3. Permalinks in article name format are more beneficial for SEO and identification

Actually, I had considered changing the permalinks when building the WordPress WeChat mini-program before, but I didn't proceed then due to SEO concerns. Although numeric permalinks are foolproof and don't require manually modifying article aliases, the link recognition is too low. Often, when netizens ask Naibabiji about website building issues, I casually send the corresponding URL for them to view. However, a string of numbers makes it difficult to discern the article content, so I've now switched to a pinyin format. Additionally, I've added categories to the permalinks, making them appear like a secondary directory, to test whether this effect helps SEO.

Website SEO data when changing Permalinks

To experiment with the impact of this WordPress permalink modification on website SEO, I'm recording the current website SEO data. As of November 2nd

• Baidu Indexed: 167
• Google Indexed: 771
• 360 Indexed: 67
• Bing Indexed: 2680
• Sogou Indexed: 149
• Average traffic in the last 3 days: between 400-500

What did I do when changing Permalinks?

1. Changed SEO Plugin

Switched from the free version of All in One SEO Pack to the premium cracked version of Yoast SEO. I've also used the free version of Yoast SEO before and felt it was quite similar to All in One SEO Pack. However, yesterday I saw a relatively well-known blogger in the foreign trade circle online suggesting that his students purchase the premium version after becoming familiar with Yoast SEO. So, I casually installed the Yoast SEO premium version to experience what different advantages it offers. I'll write an article comparing the two SEO plugins, All in One SEO Pack and Yoast SEO, when I have time. For now, it seems consistent with Naibabiji's previous feeling—they are quite similar. However, Yoast SEO's interface and translation are more beginner-friendly. But the most crucial keyword density feature of Yoast SEO is not suitable for Chinese websites, so users of English websites can prioritize Yoast SEO.

2. Changed Permalinks

In the backend settings, switched the permalinks from numeric type to custom format.

3. Modified the slug for each Post and set up 301 redirects

This is a labor-intensive task because if you don't modify the aliases, the default URL suffix directly uses the Chinese article title, which looks unattractive. So, I manually changed all article aliases to pinyin format. (Of course, you can also useWordPress Plugin for Automatically Converting Post, Category, and Tag Page URLs to English Pinyin) However, Chinese article titles are too long, and converting them entirely to pinyin also results in lengthy URLs. Manually naming aliases is better. After changing the permalinks, all article URLs on the entire website changed, so I needed to set up 301 redirects one by one. Yoast SEO has this feature built-in, as shown in the image below:377 301 redirect rules. Adding aliases and setting up 301 redirects took a whole day.

4. Updated internal links in posts to the new URLs

Typically, website articles contain some internal links. Initially, I manually modified them one by one. Later, it suddenly occurred to me that I could perform a batch replacement in the database, which took over 2 hours to complete. For batch database modifications, I usedPlugins and Code for Batch Find and Replace to Modify Post Content in WordPress

5. Modified other links and resubmitted the sitemap

There were still some old permalink URLs in the website Theme and Menu, which I manually updated to the new URLs. The previous website sitemap file format was sitemap.xml. After installing Yoast SEO, the generated file is named sitemap_index.xml. Although sitemap.xml automatically redirects to sitemap_index.xml, I still manually submitted it to search engines for peace of mind.

6. Installed a 404 logging plugin

After a website redesign, 404 error pages are inevitable. Even without a redesign, recording 404s lets you know which links have become invalid. Therefore, Naibabiji also installed the following Plugin.No More Worrying About Dead Links WordPress 404 SEO Plugin Recommendation: 404 SolutionThus, the permalink modification for this blog is complete (I also took the opportunity to modify the homepage description again). Let's continue updating and observe the search engines' reactions.