Changed link names
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Not knowing any better, yes, I am new at this, I changed all my post names and also the link names. I didn’t know that this rendered the old link page useless and now a lot of people are getting the 404 page not found.
So now I have two sets of links, the old and the new. Some people are finding the posts via the new name so I don’t want to replace it with the old link names but I would like the old link names to link to the appropriate posts.
If you’re confused, think how confused I am and have pity on me for my stupidity.
Can I code my page for TWO links? Or is there another way to fix this.
Thanks for any help. I need it.
The blog I need help with is: (visible only to logged in users)
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I should add the broken links are coming from suggested links by WordPress on other blogs and the search engine. So these are external links. Do I have any control over this? Does WordPress eventually update the database to reflect the change to the new links name?
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WordPress should redirect your users if you changed the perma links. The broken links though can’t really be changed without being duplicate content.
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You are essentially screwed for the internal links. As to the external ones, perhaps Wp.com will update those but you’d have to ask staff for sure. http://support.wordpress.com/contact
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I contacted WordPress but I imagine they get a lot of emails and requests.
dreamsburned, how do I create duplicate content. I used html for each link.
For example, the old code for the post “Shooting Macros” would be:
And the new code is:
Is there a way to edit the blog’s html to include BOTH links without having duplicate links.
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Ok, that didn’t work.
Let me try again. You can see I am clueless but I’m learning at least. I’m just going to delete the first carat so it doesn’t show the link but the code. I hope.
Old code:
a href=”photographyforbeginners.wordpress.com/2009/11/28/i-got-a-digital-camera-now-what-shooting-in-macro-mode//” target=”_blank”>Shooting in Macro Mode
New code:
a href=”http://photographyforbeginners.wordpress.com/2009/11/28/shooting-in-macro-mode/” target=”_blank”>Shooting in Macro Mode
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What he’s saying is, if you have two links that go to the same page, search engines might think they were two identical pages, which would cause them to downgrade you. It’s not something you can make happen at this point, so don’t worry about it.
Remember, too, that external sites which have linked to you directly (not through Related Posts) will have links that go to a 404. You could, I suppose, just edit each and every one of the links back to what it was originally (you don’t need to change the TITLE, just the actual URL) but that’s a ton of work and screws up all the NEW links to your posts. If you’ve only just done this, then it should be easy to reverse with no penalty. If you did this a long time ago, then it’s probably not a good idea to change back now.
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@kernstuebing
dreamsburnred and raincoaster have answered you. I have something to add. After your site is crawled by the Google bot you can go to your webmasters account and click “crawl errors”. There is where you will see the results of your changing of urls. -
Thanks everybody. I did hear back from WordPress and since most of the broken links are generated by them as “possibly related posts” they said their database would eventually update them to the new links.
Lots of great advice and links and I really appreciate all of you.
I just wish I had thought for five seconds before changing the names of the permalinks. :(
Seemed like a good idea to shorten them at the time. -
We’ve all made mistakes like that. Some people decide to build their entire blog out of static pages and then, six months later, have to completely redo the entire thing by hand.
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Agreed. There have been many seemingly “bright ideas” that I have acted on and later regretted.
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