Best Practices when using rewriting/republishing features

  • Resolved pmorettini

    (@pmorettini)


    3 years, 11 months ago

    Hi,

    A few questions for you on how best to utilize this plugin when rewriting and republishing old articles.

    In the settings “What to Copy” I noticed that the default is NOT to copy the article date and slug. This raises some questions:

    Questions:

    1) Some of my blog posts are 8 or 9 years old and are “evergreen” types of posts. From and SEO perspective, is it better to leave the old date and URL or change it to the new “republish” date.

    2) My WordPress URLs, by the way, include the date of publishing in the URL. In hindsight, wish I wouldn’t have done that, as I have had occasional comments by readers about an article being “old”. But it doesn’t seem that you can change that in WordPress once you’ve set the URL format up.
    a. From a readership perspective, would it be better to update the URL, either to a URL containing the new date or even a URL removing the date entirely?
    b. From an SEO perspective, same question as a. above?

    3) If it IS better to change the publishing date and/or the URL for the republished article, this would negatively impact your SEO juice, no? Maybe/Maybe not the publishing date, but I would assume changing the URL would have a negative impact.

    4) Assuming changing the URL is a good idea, does the plugin have a feature to automatically redirect the old URL to the new URL?

    I’m basically trying to understand best practices from your perspective, how the plugin works, and the tradeoffs between “fresh content” and existing SEO juice from an article being around for a while, and if there is a way to maximize both of these using the plugin.

    Sorry for being so wordy – trying to make sure I’m clear. Hope I didn’t do the opposite!

    Your feedback and assistance are appreciated – great products!

    Phil Morettini

    [Moderator note: Please, No bumping].

Viewing 2 replies - 1 through 2 (of 2 total)
  • Plugin Support Michael Tiña

    (@mikes41720)

    3 years, 11 months ago

    Hi @pmorettini

    1) Yes, the default settings in ‘what to copy’ don’t include the ‘date’ and ‘slug’ elements, however, this should reflect in the clone feature, but not in the rewrite & republish feature. When you use the ‘rewrite & republish’ feature, it should just republish it under the same slug/URL and keep the same published date. However, when you make any updates to that article (not using the rewrite & republish feature), it should update the ‘modified date’ which is separate from the ‘published date’.

    Since you’ve mentioned that you have evergreen content that might need some touch ups or updates, this article might be helpful – https://yoast.com/update-or-delete-old-content-on-your-site/

    2 & 3) The ideal permalink structure would be /%postname%/ or /%category%/%postname%/ but it really would be a big consideration if you would like to change your permalink structure as a whole (especially if your site has been around for a while), as incorrect implementation can lead to many issues. Please note that this will also affect existing social shares. You can learn more about it in these articles here – https://yoast.com/wordpress-seo-url-permalink/ & https://yoast.com/change-wordpress-permalink-structure/

    4) The Yoast SEO Premium plugin (not the Yoast Duplicate Post plugin) has a redirect manager that will automatically detect slug changes and redirect from the old URL to the new URL.

    However, for site-wide permalink structure changes, it should be something more on the server-side on your .htaccess file – https://yoast.com/help/how-do-i-change-the-permalink-structure/

    We hope this helps provide a bit of direction. Please do understand that we don’t normally provide SEO advice, so we can’t help with what the best action would be for your site, as it really would depend. However, if you have any further questions regarding the usage of the Yoast Duplicate Post plugin, do let us know. Thanks.

    Thread Starter pmorettini

    (@pmorettini)

    3 years, 11 months ago

    Michael,

    I appreciate your reply and attempt to answer my several questions.

    Unfortunately, my apologies, but after reading your answers I’m more confused about the plug-in’s functionality and best practices for its use than before you responded.

    First, just to let you know that while I don’t consider myself an SEO expert, I am also far from a newbie. I’ve been doing this for a while, and have been a Yoast user and a regular reader of the Yoast newsletter for quite some time (I have previously read all the articles that you reference).

    I understand the diciness of changing the URL structure form my blog, so let’s forget about that aspect.

    The thing I’d like to get clear answers on is the Post date(s), both in how the plugin works as well as recommended best SEO practices:

    You wrote:
    Yes, the default settings in ‘what to copy’ don’t include the ‘date’ and ‘slug’ elements, however, this should reflect in the clone feature, but not in the rewrite & republish feature. When you use the ‘rewrite & republish’ feature, it should just republish it under the same slug/URL and keep the same published date.

    When I first read this, I was very confused. In the Plugin’s setup page: Duplicate Post Options/”What to Copy” Tab, the Date, Status and Slug boxes are all unchecked by default. After looking at it again and considering what you wrote, I’m now assuming the following:

    1) Those changeable Settings apply only to the CLONE option of the plugin AND
    2) The REWRITE AND REPUBLISH option doesn’t essentially leave those 3 boxes unchecked and indeed you can’t actually change any of these settings for the REWRITE AND REPUBLISH version of the plugin.

    Am I correct in my understanding? If I am, none of this is obvious in the plugin’s settings and you might want to add some text to explain it.

    Next, you wrote “However, when you make any updates to that article (not using the rewrite & republish feature), it should update the ‘modified date’ which is separate from the ‘published date’.”

    Does this mean:
    1) When I first use the REWRITE AND REPUBLISH feature, this does not by itself change the “date modified” date? The way I read your response, I would first need to rewrite and republish, then after that, do another “normal” update to the article, to get a changed “date modified” date?
    2) I was actually not aware that there was a specific “date modified” field in WordPress. Neither the date modified or the date published explicitly are visible in my Blog posts (although the month/year are embedded in the URL, as discussed before); I assume I could change that in WordPress to make those two dates visible -is that correct?
    3) Is a newer “date modified” considered to be a positive from an SEO perspective?
    4) If a newer “date modified” is an SEO positive, does “date modified” need to be explicitly visible in the Blog post, or is it always available in the metadata and readable by the search engines regardless of whether or not it is visible to the reader?
    5) From an SEO perspective, do the search engines favor a) a brand new article (change the published date) or b) a “more seasoned” article with a newer “date modified” and an older original “date published”?

    Sorry to expand my questions with more questions! I’m trying to make sure that I do things as well as possible as I undertake re-writing a large number of posts on my website. Your assistance is greatly appreciated.

    Phil

Viewing 2 replies - 1 through 2 (of 2 total)

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