WordPress Pretty Permalinks vs Site Speed
-
A couple of issues at play here as I wrestle with the best permalink structure for a site I'm toying with now.
1. I know that WordPress wants a unique number in the post to improve performance and db calls.
2. I know that for basic on-page SEO, most of us would opt for CATEGORY/POST or maybe even just post. I constantly change those. It's a bad habit, but sometimes you want the killer headline and a decent title in the post.
So here is the issue:
I can rewrite or use a plugin (anyone have a favorite) the permalinks to speed up site performance. We all know Google wants that. Maybe the permalink becomes /1234-foo
But you know, a number in front of the URL just isn't awfully user friendly. If someone wants to read the foo post, it's nice to send them directly there.
So would you trade off a slowdown in site speed for the prettiest permalinks for usability and SEO?
And since you're asking a WP question, has anyone heard of a hard cap on static pages where the database starts dragging?
The site I have in mind has 400 each posts and pages. Would moving platforms to Drupal or Joomla allow handling that many pages more effectively?
Thanks for contributing and any help you can give.
George
-
For my sites I prefer to use user-friendly URLS so they look nice and pretty when a searcher sees them on the Google results. To keep my WordPress installs nice and fast I use a plugin called W3 Total Cache. Any time the server doesn't have to hit the database it will be much faster -this plugin helps with that. I also use another plugin called CSprites (or something like that) to put all images into a sprite file. This combination, plus a dedicated server, keeps my sites serving very fast even with some dynamic widgets on the page.
-
I agree with Alan. Wordpress has been turned into a full blown CMS platform and is capable of handling well over 400 pages. A quick walk through some of the sites in the Wordpress Showcase (http://wordpress.org/showcase/) will reveal several sites that are well of 400/800 in page size. And if you make the pages static there are going to be even fewer server calls. Speed at that level will really be determined by server speeds, network bandwidth, connectivity, and up times. Typically a slow site can be solved by a new host not a new CMS.
-
400 posts and 400 pages is not very many pages or posts, not by any stretch of the imagination. How much lag are you seeing in tests with the permalink URLs? If it's significant, it's not a WordPress issue - more likely a database corruption or server problem causing the slowdown between the front end and database.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Page speed in relation to SEO
I cannot seem to find any information about this, so I thought I would try to get a few people's opinion. How do you think pagespeed is measured in terms of Google using it as a ranking factor? Do you think they use their internal Pagespeed app? Something during the crawl? Your GA site speed?
Technical SEO | | LesleyPaone0 -
301 Multiple Sites to Main Site
Over the past couple years I had 3 sites that sold basically the same products and content. I later realized this had no value to my customers or Google so I 301 redirected Site 2 and Site 3 to my main site (Site 1). Of course this pushed a lot of page rank over to Site 1 and the site has been ranking great. About a week ago I moved my main site to a new eCommerce platform which required me to 301 redirect all the url's to the new platform url's which I did for all the main site links (Site 1). During this time I decided it was probably better off if I DID NOT 301 redirect all the links from the other 2 sites as well. I just didn't see the need as I figured Google realized at this point those sites were gone and I started fearing Google would get me for Page Rank munipulation for 301 redirecting 2 whole sites to my main site. Now I am getting over 1,000 404 crawl errors in GWT as Google can no longer find the URL's for Site 2 and Site 3. Plus my rankings have dropped substantially over the past week, part of which I know is from switching platforms. Question, did I make a mistake not 301 redirecting the url's from the old sites (Site 2 and Site 3) to my new ecommerce url's at Site 1?
Technical SEO | | SLINC0 -
How Often is Site Crawled
Good morning- I saw some errors in my first crawl and immediately removed the pages from my website. I then re-created my XML sitemap and uploaded to Google. The question I have is will the site be crawled to recognize the changes in the next day or so? The pages were just placed on the site as test pages and never removed. The initial crawl that notified me it was done found the errors and were removed. Thanks for your help. Peter
Technical SEO | | VT_Pete0 -
How do you handle Wordpress sitemaps within your site?
I have a regular site map on my site and I also have a Wordpress site installed within it that we use for blog/news content. I currently have an auto-sitemap generator installed in Wordpress which automatically updates the sitemap and submits it to the search engines each time the blog is updated. The question I have (which I think I know the answer to but I just want to confirm) is do I have to include all of the articles within the blog in the main site's sitemap despite the Wordpress sitemap having them in there already? If I do include the articles in the main website's sitemap, they would also be in the Wordpress sitemap as well, which is redundant. Redundancy is not good, so I just want to make sure.
Technical SEO | | iresqkeith0 -
Converting Old Web Site to Wordpress
I have a website I would like to update and convert to WordPress. My site rates very highly for the keywords I care about and I have a lot of domain authority and page authority that I don't want to lose. I'm concerned about the switch as I don't want to hurt my Google positioning, but would like the benefits of a WordPress site. Any assistance and advice is appreciated.
Technical SEO | | greg.baumgartner0 -
What to do next with my site gamblingsites.co
So I have this site gamblingsites.co, which I launched about a year ago (I think.) This used to be internetgamblingsites.net (a domain I bought, but never managed to get in the index, and it appeared to violate the T/Cs after asking in GWMT) and before that the site used to be casinowarehouse.eu. After moving to gamblingsites.co, the pages were indexed almost instantly. I kept a 301 in place until today as I had some links pointing to internetgamblingsites.net. Now, until a few weeks ago, everything was fine. The site was ranking top 10 for gambling sites (8-10) and I had some traffic everyday. This site wasn't my top priority, so besides adding new unique content, I didn't do much with it. In each case no shady link building or what-so-ever. On February first of this year, however, it lost all of its rankings, and I have no idea why. Much worse site appear in the top 50, where a sub page of my site appears somewhere on the 9th SERP for keyword 'gambling sites.' Last week I started contacting some people and asked them to update my links. I also used my own sites (all on unique hosting accounts) to build some branded links, i.e. 'GamblingSites.co' and similar terms to down tune the exact match. I also decreased the instances of the exact match on the homepage, to avoid over optimization. Finally, I removed the 301 from internetgamblingsites.net, since the better links have been changed (or are about to get changed soon.) Now, couple of days later... no changes, but it's probably to early to judge. My question to you: "What would you do next, to try to save the site and at least get some traffic to it?" Thank you for your help, Giorgio PS: Feel free to ask for more information.
Technical SEO | | VisualSense0 -
What is the best permalink structure for WordPress?
Hi, Does anyone have practical knowledge of the best permalink structure to use in WordPress? I have seen recommendations for just the post name or category and post name and then some who suggest having 3 digits as part of the structure for pick up in Google news. I am left a little confused - does anyone have practical experience of the best structure please?
Technical SEO | | Wallander0