How to bulk replace link in Wordpress - Quick tip using SQL

Wordpress is well used and versed with SEO, blogs & website. But how to bulk replace links on this CMS?

How can I do that?

You may ask yourself "How can I bulk replace external links on my wordpress thank to a matching table?"

Recently I was looking at changing links in bulk: yes an affiliate platform changed their links and if still want to earn some money to run my website, I clearly need to change these links, Going one by one, was clearly not an option (we are talking about nearly a thousand links), so I asked myself if there was a way to do this in bulk. Let me show you how I did it -- and spoiler alert -- there are different way for doing that ; plus it's not that hard.

The Better Search Replace plug-in

To bulk replace external links on your WordPress website, you can use a plugin called "Better Search Replace". This plugin allows you to search for specific links and replace them with new ones in bulk.

You might want to make a of you website and/or databse before using this plugin!

Can this plugin be used to replace one link?

You've got 6 steps to follow:

1. Install and activate the plugin on your WordPress website.
2. Go to the "Tools" section in your WordPress dashboard and click on "Better Search Replace".
3. In the "Search for" field, enter the URL of the external link that you want to replace.
4. In the "Replace with" field, enter the new URL that you want to use.
5. Select the tables where you want to search for and replace the links. By default, the plugin will search for and replace links in the "posts" table.
6. Finnaly, Click on the "Run Search/Replace" button to start the process. The plugin will search for all instances of the old URL and replace them with the new URL.

Keep in mind that this process is irreversible, so it's important to make sure that you have a backup of your website before using this plugin.

And the good (best) part with this plugin is you can do it in bulk. YEEEEEESSSS

Can this plugin be used to bulk replace several links at once?

Yes, the Better Search Replace plugin allows you to import a CSV file to replace external links in bulk. To do this, follow these six steps (nearly the same as the ones above):

1. Install and activate the Better Search Replace plugin on your WordPress website.
2. Go to the "Tools" section in your WordPress dashboard and click on "Better Search Replace".
3. Click on the "Import" tab at the top of the page.
4. Click on the "Choose File" button and select the CSV file that you want to import. The CSV file should contain two columns: the old URL in the first column and the new URL in the second column.
5. Select the tables where you want to search for and replace the links. By default, the plugin will search for and replace links in the "posts" table.
6. Click on the "Run Search/Replace" button to start the process. The plugin will search for all instances of the old URLs in the CSV file and replace them with the new URLs.

I repeat, this process is irreversible, so it's important to make sure that you have a backup of your website before using this plugin.

But the next question is (for the techies amoung us): Can I do the same thing directly on my MySQL interface?

Can I do the same thing directly on my MySQL interface?

And the answer is -- also -- Yes, you can use MySQL to bulk replace external links on your WordPress website. You "just" have to understand how SQL works, and you're good to go!

Here's how you can do it:

1. Open your MySQL interface and connect to your WordPress database.
2. Run the following SQL query to find all instances of the old URL in the "posts" table:

    SELECT * FROM wp_posts WHERE post_content LIKE '%old-url%';

3. Replace "old-url" with the actual URL that you want to replace. This query will return all posts that contain the old URL in their content.
4. Run the following SQL query to replace the old URL with the new URL in the "posts" table:

    UPDATE wp_posts SET post_content = REPLACE(post_content, 'htttp://www.old-url.tld', 'htttp://www.new-url.tld');

5. Replace "old-url" and "new-url" with the actual URLs that you want to use. This query will update all posts that contain the old URL and replace it with the new URL.

Once again -- and YES i repeat mysefl -- keep in mind that this process is irreversible, so it's important to make sure that you have a backup of your database before running these queries.

In my case I was going after external links, but you can do the same for internal links.