How to update all in-site redirect URLs to destination URLs at once

Question

I have transferred my Blogger-run website to Wordpress.

As you know, Blogger's default permalink format includes date before slug and .html at the end, which in my understanding adversely affects SEO. After I exported my site to WordPress, I changed the permalink format simply to mysite.com/slug. I modified the .htaccess to enforce 301 redirects to redirect all existing internal URLs to newly applied permalinks.

As for the SEO, it worked; it did not appear to affect my ranking. However, I feel that internal URLs would better serve my purpose if they are linked as they are instead of as redirect URLs.

I use Broken Links Checker (https://wordpress.org/plugins/broken-link-checker/) to check my broken links. It identifies, correctly, the following URLs that redirect, albeit to valid URLs. The plug-in has an option called "Fix Redirects" to be applied as bulk actions. I tried that, but I'm not sure what it does.

So is there any way for me to update all my previous URLs to the redirected/destination URLs at once?

Answer 1

It seems you want to update all the internal links on your WordPress site to point directly to the new URLs instead of relying on redirects. To do this, you can use a plugin called "Better Search Replace" which allows you to search and replace any URL within your WordPress database. Here are the steps to update your internal links:

1. First, backup your WordPress database. It's important to have a backup before making any changes to the database.

2. Install and activate the "Better Search Replace" plugin (https://wordpress.org/plugins/better-search-replace/).

3. Go to "Tools" > "Better Search Replace" in your WordPress dashboard.

4. In the "Search for" field, enter the old URL format (e.g., http://www.example.com/yyyy/mm/dd/slug.html). You can use placeholders like % to represent any sequence of characters. For example, you can use http://www.example.com/%/%/%/slug.html to cover any date format.

5. In the "Replace with" field, enter the new URL format (e.g., http://www.example.com/slug).

6. Select all the tables in the "Select tables" section. This ensures that the plugin searches and replaces URLs throughout your entire WordPress database.

7. Check the box for "Run as dry run?" This option allows you to preview the changes before they are applied. Click the "Run Search/Replace" button.

8. Review the results to ensure the changes are correct. If everything looks good, uncheck the "Run as dry run?" option and click the "Run Search/Replace