SEO and Wordpress post/page changes

[Adammo]

Yet another SEO question from me

Ive been using google analytics lately to see how people are getting to my site. So far the majority are finding it through some very low search terms (low hits for #1 in google and low competition). I want to start attracting more people to my money making posts and pages and have found some much better keyword terms than I use now.

My plan was to modify my posts and pages in both the URL and title, but then I read that google will penialize you as it will be looking for old posts. The way I see it is I have 3 options, hoping the experts could tell me which way is best.

1- modify the title only and of my posts and pages.
2- modify both the title and URL and wait for google to be happy with my site again (month or so?)
3- create the same posts and pages but with the better named titles and urls. But will google treat this as duplicate content?

Thanks for any help!

 

[djbaxter]

Fortunately, there's a WordPress plug-in to handle that issue.

First make sure you install the All-in-One SEO Pack plug-in.

Next, install Dean's Permalinks Migration plug-in. This was is fairly old but is still working on the latest version. If you have any trouble with this one, other alternatives are:

• WordPress › Advanced Permalinks WordPress Plugins
  
• WordPress › Redirection | WordPress Plugins
  
• WordPress › Quick Page/Post Redirect | WordPress Plugins

By the way, another potentially useful link for affiliates is WordPress › Affiliate Link and Redirection | WordPress Plugins.

 

[Adammo]

Thanks this helps, I like the category | post name best. But i'm wondering how to safely change the specific URL of the post.

In the above image, I would like to change the post title and the URL highlighted in red. I've heard if I change that red URL that my page rank will go down. I just think this URL could be much better optimized. Would Google come back and put me back up, or could I tell Google not to visit the old URL: "team-canada-apparel".

 

[djbaxter]

1. Install that Deans Permalinks plugin (see above).

2. Go to your Dashboard and edit the post. Change the title to whatever you want.

All will be fine.

 

[Adammo]

Oh ok perfect! I was thinking that I would need to change the URL portion as well.

i.e. sitename.com/team-canada-apparel to sitename.com/better-search-term.

Should I change the title in both the post section and the All-in-One SEO section, or is the SEO section sufficient?

Thanks again, really learn a lot from your posts .

 

[djbaxter]

You just edit the post title and the "post slug" from your dashboard. The name/title of your blog (overall) shouldn't change so don't do it in the SEO plugin.



...unless you're saying you also want to change your blog title... in that case, you would do it (again from the WP dashboard) in Settings | General | Blog Title and Settings | All-in-One | Home Title.

 

[Adammo]

Sorry for the confusion. Let me try more screenshots .

That's the word i'm looking for...the post slug. I heard that Google will penalize me if I change that.

What I want to do is change both the title and slug from team canada apparel to something else...let's say "awesome stuff". So should I make the change in all of the locations in red below, or will the Post Title and All-in-One SEO pack title be ok?

Edit Post:

All-in-One section (on the same page):

 

[djbaxter]

Sorry for the confusion. Let me try more screenshots .

That's the word i'm looking for...the post slug. I heard that Google will penalize me if I change that.

What I want to do is change both the title and slug from team canada apparel to something else...let's say "awesome stuff". So should I make the change in all of the locations in red below, or will the Post Title and All-in-One SEO pack title be ok?

Edit Post:

All-in-One section (on the same page):

If you installed Dean's Permalinks plug-in, all you need to do is change the post title and the post slug. Dean's plug-in will take care of redirecting old URLs.

Don't do anything with the All-in-One SEO plug-in. The title in those setting is the title of your blog, not the title of a single post. The format for the post titles is set via variables - I believe it's %post_title% | %blog_title% by default (scroll down to where you see Post Title Format:.

 

[Adammo]

Oh crap...so I should have been using my site name (Team Canada Hockey), and description in the All In One SEO section for all of my posts? Or do you mean just leave the All In One SEO section blank in each individual post/page? Right now I actually have filled out each specific page and post related to the particular page.

For example:

The Google search: Team Canada Mens Hockey Roster | Team Canada Hockey

Within WordPress:
Title: Team Canada Mens Roster
Slug: team-canada-mens-roster

All-In-One Title (filled out by me): Team Canada Mens Hockey Roster

I'm kind of confused now. I've got Dean's plugin all set up and my URL now don't display the date and will re-driect. So should I:

1 - Remove all of the All-in-One SEO titles and descriptions for individual pages/posts
2 - Rename my post titles and slug to my better terms
3 - Let it go and Google will not penalize me

Hope that makes sense!

My original thinking this whole time was that if I edit the %postname% from team-canada-apparel to awesome-clothes (not my real term) that I would be penalized by Google as it would look for team-canada-apparel for a while instead of awesome-clothes

 

[djbaxter]

You generally only have to set the details in All-in-One once. Then leave it.

If you want, PM me a login to your blog and I'll check it out.

 

[Adammo]

Sent your way, again much appreciated!

 

[djbaxter]

OK. I can see one source of confusion. When you edit a post, way down at the bottom of the edit page is something added by the All-in-One-SEO-Pack plug-in... the title in that field IS for the individual post but you can leave that blank. Then it will just use the actual post title.

Still checking out the other settings.

 

[djbaxter]

I changed the setting in Dean's "PermalinksMigration".

All-in-One-SEO settings look fine.

I would suggest you also install WordPress › WordPress Related Posts WordPress Plugins

 

[Adammo]

Thank you again, appreciate your time for this!

 

[Adammo]

I would suggest you also install WordPress ? WordPress Related Posts WordPress Plugins

Just installed this plug-in. I highly suggest it to anyone else as well. I added the php code to both my index and post sections and it looks great. Should help the Google bots as well I would think!

Thanks again.

 

[djbaxter]

Looks great.

It does help to direct search engine spiders to other areas of your site. And it helps your visitors, basically saying, "If you found this post interesting, you might also be interested in reading these related posts". It's a good way to keep visitors on your site a little longer, and the longer they stay the better the odds that you may be able to sell them something..

 

[Adammo]

Sorry to bump this up again, just thought of something else (I swear hamsters are running wheels through my brain half the time lol).

Would it be worthwhile to change some of my category names to better terms? For instance: "juniors" to "canada_juniors"? The term "canada juniors" produces much better results than "juniors".

Thanks!