Google’s John Mueller warns not to change URLs for SEO reasons. Is he right? It depends, of course. Here are some exceptions.
Personally, I change outdated, harmful or lengthy web addresses (a.k.a., URLs) when updating existing content quite often.
Why? Let me explain.
What did Google’s John Mueller say about changing URLs for SEO?
Before we dive in, let’s see what the official Google position on changing URLs for SEO seems to be. It’s quoted from a tweet by John Mueller, Search Advocate at Google, as the connection between webmasters and the search giant.
As reported by Barry Schwartz on Search Engine Roundtable, Mueller stated that the risk is much higher than the possible reward when changing URLs (for SEO reasons):
“(…) Will it help the site? Very, very rarely (if they have terrible URLs that you can’t even copy & paste, maybe). Will a change negatively affect the site for a while until it’s reprocessed? Probably. Some risk + usually no gain.”
How does a proper URL look in the first place?
Let’s start with the ideal state of your URL.
In case you are using WordPress or a similar CMS, you will most likely have a well-designed URL structure already by current standards.
The examples below are all fine:
- example.com/post-title
- example.com/topic/post-title
- example.com/topic/sub-topic/post-title
Does your URL look anything like this? Congratulations! You most likely do not have to change anything!
It’s just like Mueller said: the risk of changing a URL would outweigh...
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