Default Wordpress 301 Redirects of JS and CSS files. Bad for SEO & How to Fix?

[Daaveey]

Hi there:

We are developers with some digital marketing expertise, but a current issue has us perplexed. An outside SEO firm has asked us to clean up a large number of 301 redirects. Most of these are 'default' Wordpress behavior that relate to calling the latest version of a JS or CSS file. For instance, a JS file is called with this: https://websitexyz.com/wp-includes/js/wp-embed.min.js?ver=4.9.1 but ultimately redirects to this: https://websitexyz.com/wp-includes/js/wp-embed.min.js. We are being asked to prevent the redirect from happening by, presumably, calling the ultimate file to begin with.

The issue is that, as far as we know, there's no easy way to alter WP behavior to call the ultimate file to begin with. Does anyone have any thoughts on this?

Thanks.

[Martijn_Scheijbeler]

Hey David,

Depending on if you're using a custom template or not, you might want to look into this blog posts which is talking about that you can basically register files & styles to be inserted but they don't always have to have the version number: http://wpcrux.com/blog/wordpress-enqueue-functions-version/ . I've dealt with this once before, although it's a super tiny issue that is usually something that I would put on my roadmaps ;).

Martijn.

[Daaveey]

Thanks Martijn, we'll look into the blog post and implement.

dave