Stop Yoast Site Health error about postname

Hi @tacticalreviewsblog

Would it be possible for you to provide more details or a screenshot on the exact notification you are receiving from the Yoast SEO plugin in the Site Health section?

Do you mean you are using the plain permalink structure (e.g. /?p=123) for your site? In this case, we really do recommend updating the permalink structure if possible – https://yoast.com/change-wordpress-permalink-structure/

Hi @mikes41720

Thanks for the reply. I can’t see how to attach an image here, so I’ll do my best to describe it.

When I go onto the Site health screen it is always showing ‘1 recommended improvement’ for SEO. “You do not have your postname in the URL of your posts and pages”

“It’s highly recommended to have your postname in the URL of your posts and pages. Consider setting your permalink structure to /%postname%/.
You can fix this on the Permalink settings page.

This was reported by the Yoast SEO plugin”

My website has been live for over 6 years and has thousands of links, and so many external to me that I have no control over. I simply cannot change the permalink setting if it will break all existing links.

If there were a way to maintain all current ‘simple’ links and change new post links to be the recommended one I would definitely do that, but it seems WordPress is one or the other, not allowing for a ‘change to future links’.

As I came to SEO late, and it seems too late for this basic thing (Also as my post titles are often long, the URLs were a bit too long), I just want to ‘accept’ the error and move on without it being a permanent feature.

So firstly can the error be silenced, and secondly might there be a way to implement both URL structures in parallel?

Thank you.

@tacticalreviewsblog Thanks for your reply.

Regarding your questions, we’ve addressed each below individually:

So firstly can the error be silenced

Unfortunately, no there isn’t a way to silence this notification. However, please understand that this isn’t an error so much as it’s a warning designed to make the user aware of a potential issue. The Site Health area of WordPress is meant to notify you of items you should be aware of, but doesn’t necessarily mean that they have to or should be changed. In your case, as your site has been live for a very significant amount of time, a change to your permalink structure is not advisable as it would have a negative impact on ranking.

secondly might there be a way to implement both URL structures in parallel?

No, there really isn’t a way to have both permalink structures active simultaneously. However, you could implement something similar to this if you were to change the permalink structure and as long as you had redirects already configured to point the old version of the URL to the new version, it would significantly lessen the negative impact the change would have on the site’s SEO.

We are going ahead and marking this issue as resolved due to inactivity. If you require any further assistance please create a new issue.