WordPress.org

1. Netdetective
   Member
   Posted 3 years ago #

   I notice permalinks converts the title of each post into a subdirectory URL. When these get really long, resulting from long titles, is it possible this could trigger the spam filters of Google or Yahoo? I figure excessively long directory names in URLs might give the appearance of keyword stuffing or spam software. If I use permalinks, should I keep my post titles short to avoid this problem?

   Some people claim wordpress's default query strings that contain '?' are not as SE friendly as permalinks, but could permalinks also come at a risk? Before I enabled permalinks, I did notice google indexing the default wordpress URLs with no problem.

2. podz
   Support Maven
   Posted 3 years ago #

   I don't recall anyone posting here with permalink problems related to SEO.

3. Netdetective
   Member
   Posted 3 years ago #

   I did some Google searches for "Google Wordpress" and found some alarming pages about Wordpress and spamming.

   http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/03/31/196220&tid=217

   http://www.threadwatch.org/node/2106

   I know I'm doing my best to maintain a clean blog, but I'm sure like any web publishing tool, some people will abuse it. The issue seems to be mostly concerning Google Adsense. Like many people, I have been running Google Adsense ads in my Sidebar but I'm wondering if maybe it's not worth the risk.

4. podz
   Support Maven
   Posted 3 years ago #

   Those two threads refer to old, very old news.
   They also have nothing whatsoever to do with permalinks.

5. ryanduff
   Member
   Posted 3 years ago #

   I get very good SEO from Wordpress by default. I have a few posts that have quickly jumped up to the first page in Google and have gotten some positive and negative feedback because of it.

   One outstanding is a review of a hosting company I did, comes up on the first page amongst the rest of their links and it tends to deter people from them. They (the hosting company) are always nagging me about it.

6. angsuman
   Member
   Posted 3 years ago #

   > Netdetective
   The news you pointed out is about WordPress author Matt's (mis?)use of this site and its Google PR in the past, since rectified.
   Please read the news items before quoting them :)

   It has absolutely nothing to do with the Wordpress software itself or permalinks.

   If you are honest then you have nothing to fear from Google or any other search engine, permalinks or not. You can always appeal a wrong decision. In my experience and from what I heard Google plays fair.

7. jonlandrum
   Member
   Posted 3 years ago #

   Well, if super-long URL's resulted in bad PR, then what about super-big sites that have multiple levels of folders and pages? They couldn't very well be penalized for having a big site. So, no, permalinks won't keep you from getting indexed higher, but rather will assist you in getting indexed higher because Googlebot digs orderly sites.

   ~Jonathan

8. Netdetective
   Member
   Posted 3 years ago #

   I think I'll stick with the permalinks. I had a bad experience with "Rankingpower" software-generated doorway pages that used long keyword-stuffed page names, so I think seeing the long permalinks alarmed me at first, and caused me unnecessary concern.

9. jonlandrum
   Member
   Posted 3 years ago #

   Oh, you're talking about <meta name="description" content="loads of bull here about junk that doesn't really apply to this page" /> and <title>Even more loads of bull about stuff that doesn't really apply to this page</title>. Most search engines don't even read keyword/description tags anymore for this very reason. The <title> tag is what is responsible for the thirteen-inch-long names for your pages, though, not the permalink.

   ~Jon

10. Netdetective
    Member
    Posted 3 years ago #

    Maybe I should use shorter titles.

11. jonlandrum
    Member
    Posted 3 years ago #

    Get Optimal Title; it puts the title of the page before the name of your site. Keep your titles two or three words in length and select a right-angle quote ("»" "»") or pipe (|) for a separator.

12. Netdetective
    Member
    Posted 3 years ago #

    Which style of permalink is overall best choice for the purposes of Google or Yahoo in your opinion?

    The date format /blog/2006/01/10/post/

    or numeric /blog/archives/

13. jonlandrum
    Member
    Posted 3 years ago #

    I use /archives/year/monthnum/day/post-name/ because I'm also using Smart Archives and the plugin requires this format.

14. Netdetective
    Member
    Posted 3 years ago #

    The optional title plugin evidently doesn't work with my version of Wordpress. 1.5.1.3. wp_title() doesn't exist in index.php, but it does in header.php. Changing it to optional_title() turns my blog page into a blank page.

    I'm not exactly sure how to install it. I see in my google search results for my blog pages, the same blog title is appearing in every single one.

15. jonlandrum
    Member
    Posted 3 years ago #

    Right, wp_title() is in the head; it's that way on every version of WP. But you misspelled optimal_title(). I use the plugin this way: <title><?php optimal_title(); ?><?php bloginfo('name'); ?></title>. Well, actually I replaced <?php bloginfo('name'): ?> with JonLandrum.com. One less PHP call to process (don't know if it ammounts to a hill of beans though!)

    ~Jonathan

16. Netdetective
    Member
    Posted 3 years ago #

    I corrected my spelling mistake to optimal_title() but I still got a blank white page. I must be doing something else wrong.

    Do you find that the
    /%year%/%monthnum%/%day%/%postname%/ format ranks better on Google and Yahoo than the
    /archives/%post_name%/ format?

    Does the SmartArchives eliminate the need for writing to a .htaccess file? In the past, doing so has caused conflicts with functions in my site's root .htaccess
    Fred

17. jonlandrum
    Member
    Posted 3 years ago #

    Well, upgrading to 2.0 fixes a lot of .htaccess problems, in that the file is considerably smaller. The new .htaccess implements hacks I had been using on 1.5.x. Also, the optimal-title plugin requires the use of the /archives/year/monthnum/day/post-name/ format in order to work.

    Oh yeah, did you make the archives in a WP "page"? The way I had to do it was to actually modify the archives.php file and link directly to it from my sidebar. I remember I had the white page issue when I tried to put the call in a WP page I created. Delete that file and go right to the source. But wp_list_pages(); won't grab that page. I'm manually adding my pages (because it also didn't list the home page, which is a pet peeve of mine.) I wrote about that here.

    The method I am using to list my pages is this:

    <li><?php if ( is_page('2') ) { ?>About<?php } else { ?><a href="/about/" title="About Stuff">About</a><?php } ?></li>

    where this particular call is for my "About" page. Obviously you would change the number between the parenthesis of the is_page() call to the page you are linking to. But, this method (when you enter a string of code such as this fore every page you have) produces a list of links like this:

    » Home
    » About
    » Archives
    » Links

    and so forth. The "About" link attribute is removed when the user is actually visiting the "About" page. The same is true for every page in the list. If, however, all you want is to list your pages, you won't have to have the if/else PHP calls; you can simply put your <li>'s with their respective links and be done with it.

    ~Jonathan

18. Netdetective
    Member
    Posted 3 years ago #

    Jonathan,
    I could upgrade to version 2.0 but I'm concerned the upgrading process won't be seemless, and my blog might be down for a long time while I struggle to figure out why I cannot reestablish a database connection. I installed 2.0 on other domain but I see it's considerably more complex and bloated than 1.5.

    It's been my experience so far that MySql databases are extremely fickle and prone to corruption with WP reinstallations. In the past, this gave me a lot of trouble and I ended up having to go into cpanel > MyPHPAdmin and manually drop all my database tables in order to get it working again with a new installation of Wordpress.

    I'm wondering if with my use of the simple format of
    /index.php/archive/%postname%/
    what happens if I happen to have 2 posts with the same title? Would that create a URL conflict? I don't suppose WP automatically adds a (1), etc.. to the URL when this occurs.

19. moshu
    Member
    Posted 3 years ago #

    I don't suppose WP automatically adds a (1), etc.. to the URL when this occurs.

    Actually, it does. In many instances WP seems to be smarter than its users ;)

20. PetLvr
    Member
    Posted 3 years ago #

    I'm reaching nearly a 1,000 posts on my PetLvr blog now. In my blog, I've been posting lots of free articles. I always search by name to prevent duplicate posting, but some think it's clever to change their name to keep track where their articles are (I guess) from different sources.

    It's great having WP change the permalink URL automatically by adding a 1 at the end - it lets me know when I post duplicate articles and gives me a second chance to check for duplicate postings.

    // Moshu .. Don't laugh .. re: http://The-Singers.com .. if you recall I've been experience TONS of permalinks problems .. I tried the old 'microsoft miracle' method to fix it. I've tried everything, and wrote everything down, and then tried the links. It only worked after doing this:

    - go to Options / Permalinks
    - click default
    - click permalink update button
    - click date and name based
    - click permalink update button
    - click date and name based
    - click custom field
    - changed /%year%/%month%/%date%/ to /%category%/
    ( so, permalinks = /%category%/%postname%/ )
    - click permalink update button

    Believe it or not - that worked. I did no upgrade. I did no downgrade. In fact, I did nothing but accept the fact that my blog was going to have to live up to the default ...url/?p=xxx format.

    Strange, eh? Maybe that will work for someone else? I know how aggravating this permalink problem is.

21. Monika
    Member
    Posted 3 years ago #

    permalink redirect is a very good plugin,
    as SEO you have to use it ;)

    the best linkstructur for Serach enginees are
    yourdomain/postname

    but if you would like to change your linkstructure
    use htaccess with a redirect permanent to the new uri

    to optimize your lbog
    try to think simple:
    you click the archive "thebest".
    than give search enginess a good meta descritpion for this archive ..
    not one for all,

    and so on..

    this are only little things..
    the best is good useful content ...

    and..
    an old seo quote:
    if you have done what you can do..
    sit down with a bottle of tea and wait and wait and try to get backlinks
    and wait and trink tea ...;)

    kindly regards

22. Netdetective
    Member
    Posted 3 years ago #

    Is it an acceptable practice to leave out the word "archives"?

    /index.php/%year%/%monthnum%/%day%/%postname%/

    Fred

23. vkaryl
    Member
    Posted 3 years ago #

    Sure. I use only /%year%/%monthnum%/%day%/%postname%/ and it works fine....

24. Netdetective
    Member
    Posted 3 years ago #

    I am however having to include /index.php/ due to earlier .htaccess file conflicts I encountered when attempting to get rid of it. If I keep the index.php in the URL, I won't need to monkey around with .htaccess.

    Writing to the .htaccess file in WP made it so my canonical 301 redirect in my site's root .htaccess file quit working.

25. Netdetective
    Member
    Posted 3 years ago #

    What happens if I change my permalink after Google has already indexed my blog pages under the original permalink scheme? Is this ever a problem for Google?

    What if I removed 404.php from my theme so that any wrong URLs bounce back to my blog homepage instead of the 404 page?

26. jonlandrum
    Member
    Posted 3 years ago #

    Yes, it's a different page that Google doesn't know about. Monika mentioned the Permalink Redirect plugin. From the site: "It is used to ensure that there is only one URL associated with each blog entry."

27. sguler
    Member
    Posted 3 years ago #

    If I use permalinks, should I keep my post titles short to avoid this problem?
    - YES.

    The optional title plugin evidently doesn't work with my version of Wordpress. 1.5.1.3. wp_title() doesn't exist in index.php, but it does in header.php. Changing it to optional_title() turns my blog page into a blank page.
    - I ALSO HAD THE SAME PROBLEM. BUT FOUND THE BELOW CODE (can't remember the source), it's definetly working...No need to install Optimal Plugin, just paste this code to your page..

    <title>
    <?php wp_title(' '); ?>
    <?php if(wp_title(' ', false)) { echo ' - '; } ?>
    <?php bloginfo('name'); ?>
    </title>

    First it prints the post's heading and then prints Blog's name..

    See it in action RacingVideoz.com

28. Netdetective
    Member
    Posted 3 years ago #

    I just inserted your code into header.php, but I'm not sure if it's working right. I'm not getting a blank page which is good.
    Thanks,
    Fred

29. Dreamshop
    Member
    Posted 3 years ago #

    To go back to the original question...there are some who feel that long urls might be risky, but in my experience they have not been a problem. You really have to create an entire page full of spam techniques to even come close to be banned.

    There is no black and white in SEO, some things are riskier than others but even then it doesn't really mean you'll get penalized. There are many many things that would be considered serious spam compared to long page/file titles (such as hidden text).

    As someone else mentioned the best optimized permalink structure for file names is 'yourdomain/postname'. The more folders a file address has in it the less importance search engines give to it...but there are so many other factors that can outweigh that as well (age of the site, amount of content on site, number of links to specific post and the site, etc).

    All of these elements build up to help you achieve 'authority' status. The most authority you have, the more often your posts will get top ranking.

    As a side note...I'm personally having some troubles with the new 2.0 upgrade and permalinks. If you've got a large site and use permalinks I would NOT recommend upgrading just yet.

30. jonlandrum
    Member
    Posted 3 years ago #

    The new version must be iffy depending on the user, because I haven't had one ounce of trouble out of it. Although, my site is a microbe compared to many of the blogs around here!

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