Best internal linking URLS for SEO - friendly vs. 'p id=123'

[imgndgtl]

Glad to be posting here after years of reading!

We have a WordPress site which uses hardcoded (rewritten) SEO friendly URLs.
e.g. "site.com/our-work"

We are in the process of changing IA and pages are being moved around causing broken links.

Linking to WordPress default URLs seems ideal as it ensures internal links will never break.
eg. "site.com/?p_id=123"

Can anyone offer insights as to whether this is less attractive for SEO than using friendly URLs?

Thanks!

[phranque]

welcome to WebmasterWorld, imgndgtl!


you should always link internally to the canonical url, which in your case is the "SEO-friendly" url.

[imgndgtl]

thanks phranque

[lorax]

Welcome to WebmasterWorld imgndgtl!

So to be sure I understand this. Your permalinks are left to the default format. How are you implementing the rewrites? htaccess?

[lucy24]

Overarching rule: Link to the form of the URL that you want people to see and use. Search engines will not be happy if all your internal links lead to 301s. They will also not be happy if the same content is available at two or more URLs, as when a page is reachable at its "real" URL alongside its "friendly" URL.

Is "example.com/?p_id=123" really the WP default? That seems like a horrible, neither-fish-nor-fowl approach.

[lorax]

Yeah it's something like that. But it's so easy to change just by a mouse click. The Admin controls offers a handful of URL format options.

[imgndgtl]

Thanks for all your responses. The question was more one of convenience, ie. in case we change IA again we didn't want more broken internal links.

I did have a hunch that the SEF version was the way to go. Btw default link format will resolve to SEF URLs in WordPress.

thanks!

[steven1]

Defintely, dont use site.com/?p_id=123" type of URLS, here are guidlines of Google on URLS

[support.google.com...]

[Planet13]

"We are in the process of changing IA..."

I am sorry to ask this, but what does "IA" mean?

And why are you changing it?

[lorax]

IA == Information Architecture.