Your permalinks will now look like the ones on this blog:
http://www.yourblog.com/name-of-the-post
Now we got to redirect all backlinks using the old permalinks structure to the new permalink structure. To do so, you’ll have to edit the .htaccess file, located in WordPress root directory.
Be careful while editing .htaccess: Always create a backup before!
Paste the following line in your .htaccess:
RedirectMatch 301 /([0-9]+)/([0-9]+)/([0-9]+)/(.*)$ http://www.domain.com/$4
Allright! You just changed your permalinks structure without loosing any backlinks!
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When you are changing from day and name permalink to %postname% permalink, you can use this .htaccess code, ABOVE along with default WordPress .htaccess code. Also make sure your .htaccess file have these lines:
# BEGIN WordPress
RewriteEngine On
RewriteBase /
RewriteRule ^index\.php$ – [L]
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteRule . /index.php [L]
# END WordPress
I use post name (/%postname%/) on most of my websites as it keeps links short and allows me to insert keywords into the URL (to do this, simply change the post slug in the post editor). News blogs that publish dozens of articles per day tend to use day and post name (/%year%/%monthnum%/%day%/%postname%/) to avoid any problems with duplicate post slugs. Category and post name (/%category%/%postname%/) is another popular option.
In the past, /%postname%/ was known for having an adverse affect on website performance. Thankfully, this issue was
resolved in WordPress 3.3. Therefore, from a performance point of view and from an SEO point of view, there does not seem to be any real significance as to which user-friendly permalink structure you choose.
To change permalinks through the WordPress admin area, your .htaccess file has to be writable. To do this,
WordPress recommends that you change the file permissions of .htaccess to 644.
If you do not have permission to update .htaccess through the admin area, WordPress will give you the code for your chosen permalink structure so that you update the .htaccess file manually. You can then manually update the .htaccess file via your hosting account file manager or using a File Transfer Protocol (FTP) client.
.htaccess can also be updated manually via File Transfer Protocol (FTP).
