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.
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
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
-
Is it problematic for Google when the site of a subdomain is on a different host than the site of the primary domain?
The Website on the subdomain runs on a different server (host) than the site on the main domain.
Technical SEO | | Christian_Campusjaeger0 -
Why my site is not indexing in google
In google webmaster i have updated my sitemap in Mar 6th..There is around 22000 links..But google fetched only 5300 links for long time...
Technical SEO | | Rajesh.Chandran
I waited for 1 month till no improvement in google index..So apr6th we have uploaded new sitemap (1200 links totally)..,But only 4 links indexed in google ..
why google not indexing my urls? Is this affect our ranking in SERP? How many links are advisable to submit in sitemap for a website?0 -
Redirecting a old aged site to a new exact match site?
Hi All, I have a question. I have 2 sites with me in the same sector and want some help. site 1 is a old site started back in 2003 and has some amount of links to it and has a pr 3 with some good links to it but doesn't rank much for any keywords for the timing. site 2 is a aged domain but newly developed with unique content and has a good amount of exact match with a .com version. so will there be any benefit by redirecting site 1 to site 2 to get the seo benefits and a start for link bulding? or is it best to develop and work on each site? the sector is health insurance. Thanks
Technical SEO | | macky71 -
Site not indexing correctly
I am trying to figure out what is going on with my site listings. Google is only displaying my title and url - no description. You can see it when you search for Franchises for Sale. The site is www.franchisesolutions.com. Why could this happen? Also I saw a big drop off in a handful of keyword rankings today. Could this be related?
Technical SEO | | franchisesolutions0 -
What is a fast Wordpress Host?
I have 8 or so sites hosted with Dreamhost and my main web site (http://www.nwrafting.com) is a Wordpress site hosted there as well. I'd like to move it to another hosts so that it isn't seen as related to my other sites that link to it. My other sites are good informational sites (example: http://www.caliriver.com) and are not doorway pages, but they do provide good links to my main business. This is a good idea to move my main sight, right? If so, can someone recommend a good host for me to put my one Wordpress site on? I'm looking for something that will load my pages fast. Please don't send me an affiliate link - I want to choose the best host not the one that pays the biggest commission. Thanks!
Technical SEO | | nwrafting0 -
Ping Services for Wordpress
I have been trying to research adding ping services to the default list in wordpress, which only includes http://rpc.pingomatic.com/ A lot of the articles that I have come across seem to be quite old, can anyone tell me if this is still relevant and if so, which services do you find to be worthwhile using? Thanks
Technical SEO | | pugh0 -
Replacing a site map
We are in the process of changing our folder/url structure. Currently we have about 5 sitemaps submitted to Google. How is it best to deal with these site maps in terms of either (a) replacing the old URLs with the new ones in the site map and (b) what affect should we have if we removed the site map submission from the Google Webmaster Tools console. Basically we have in the region of 20,000 urls to redirect to the new format, and to update in the site map.
Technical SEO | | NeilTompkins0 -
Can I noindex most of my site?
A large number of the pages on my site are pages that contain things like photos and maps that are useful to my visitors, but would make poor landing pages and have very little written content. My site is huge. Would it be benificial to noindex all of these?
Technical SEO | | mascotmike0