Will changing a URL negatively affect ranking?
-
Hello Mozzers,
We would like to change the URL for a page on our website which ranks well for some our keyphrases/words. We are hoping the change of URL, through the addition of an additional keyword would help boost the rank of that URL further. At the moment out page gets 2 x A and 2 x B 1xF on the MOZ page rank tool using 5 keyphrase/word variations . One phrase ranks 4, one ranks 3 and the other 3 are 'not in the top 50'
Our plan was to change the URL, using SHF404, and use 'Fetch' in the Google search console to re-submit the page to Google.
Appreciate you can't give any guarantees how Google will behave, just wondered what your thoughts were on the wisdom of changing the URL in the first place?
Thanks
Ian
-
-
Where did you get the 15% number? Just hoping to cite it. Thanks!
-
Agreed with one note... its a really bad idea if you are already ranking for the terms you like to. There will definitely be a period of time where you will lose your rankings and although they should return to their previous rankings, Google is fickle.
So if you aren't ranking in the top 50 for several terms, simply changing the URL won't get you to the first page (it may get you into the top 50 though). You would need to update the content and backlinks (internal + external) to see worthwhile movement. Otherwise you just risk losing ranking for the terms you currently do well for.
-
It's a bad idea to monkey with your URLs, a really bad idea... but if you can't help yourself, do it immediately, because the longer you wait the more you will probably lose as that page accumulates authority.
-
Hi,
According to this article, John Mueller says Google doesn't weigh URLs that heavily when determining rank. I always advise against changing URLs unless it's absolutely necessary, as you'll lose about 15% of the page's current PR when you redirect it.
This article also directly says to not change URLs for SEO purposes: https://www.seroundtable.com/google-urls-seo-17889.html
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Ranking dropped after change single page url, should I change it back?
I was making updates to the content on the following page, and a few days later dropped from #2 SERP ranking to 50+. Things I checked: Yes, 301 redirect was implemented right away. After publishing, I manually requested indexing in search console. Right after publishing I re-submitted the sitemap manually and Google said they had not crawled it in 9 days. My question: should I change the URL back to the old one, or give it a little more time (especially since I re-submitted sitemap) Original URL: https://www.travelinsurancereview.net/plans/travel-medical/ New URL: https://www.travelinsurancereview.net/plans/travel-medical-insurance/
On-Page Optimization | | DamianTysdal0 -
URL Keywords
I am doing SEO on our eCommerce website and read that I should include keywords in the URL The original URL is: http://thegiftlinks.com/personalized-wedding-glass.html
On-Page Optimization | | abdulw
Title page: Wedding gift Dubai - Anniversary gift Dubai - Personalized Wedding Glass
Meta Data:
Wedding gift Dubai - Anniversary gift Dubai - Personalized Wedding Glass
It is great for a wedding gift and anniversary gift for friends and family members. If I will include the keyword to the url it will be like this
http://thegiftlinks.com/personalized-wedding-glass.html/Wedding-gift-Dubai is this the correct way to include keywords in the URL? Thanks0 -
Why are my rankings down?
My rankings seem to be going down all the time. Any idea why? www.rewardcharts4kids.com Thanks!
On-Page Optimization | | nicolebd0 -
Redirecting URLS on windows
Could anyone help out here please. A client of ours have reveloped their website from HTML to ASP (helpful!). They have 60 odd pages indexed in Google with the .html extension. We need to do a redirect on these pages so that all link juice is passed to the new pages. What would be the best way to do this please?
On-Page Optimization | | Grumpy_Carl0 -
Will a new domain name help rankings
If I purchase a domain name that links to my site with the new domain name being keyword specific....will that help boost rankings in Google? Reason I ask is that a particular website always ranks higher than ours because of their domain name (keyword specific). They are currently not even "open" and they still manage to rank high. I checked for links with the seomoz tools but did not see any high links etc.. Thanks!
On-Page Optimization | | teachcsg0 -
Major Ranking Drop
My site bestdslrreview dot net was ranking number one for Canon T3i. I was amazed considering my competition. 🙂 Canon T3i was at number 3 to 5 usually for US traffic.. Canon 7d review was ranking number 2 and Canon 7D was on page one. Canon 7D keywords dropped about 10 places but Canon T3i Review dropped about 50. and same for Canon T3i. I worry about a number of things, including thin affiliate site but I don't know, my articles are original. I also worry about to many links with my keywords in anchor text. My on page results from SEOMOZ look great to me. This drop was my main reasons for going ahead and signing up. Hoping I could find out what happened. The site is only about six months old. I waited probably three months before doing any significant link building. The good thing is, I was ranking high from Black Thursday until a few days before Christmas. It can't be someone else just started doing SEO as I fell far too fall. Some kind of penalty. I had Google do this to another of my sites once though and after a couple of months it bounced back for most of my keywords. A site very much like this one. Is this just the Google Dance? Thanks
On-Page Optimization | | RustyF0 -
Close URL owned by competitors.
The following example is exactly analogous to our situation (site names slightly altered😞 We own www.business-skills.com. It's our main site. We don't own, and would rather avoid paying for, www.businessskills.com. It's a parked domain and the owners want a very large sum for it. We own www.business-skills.co.uk and point it to our main site. We don't own www.businessskills.co.uk. This is owned by our biggest competitor. We also own www.[ourbrand].com and .co.uk, and point them to the main site. My question is - how much traffic do you think we may be missing due to these nearly-but-not-quite URL matches? Does it matter in terms of lost revenue? What sort of things should I be looking at to get a very rough estimate?
On-Page Optimization | | JacobFunnell0 -
What is the best practice for changing a url of an existing page
I a looking through the on-page SEO reports in SEOmoz for one of my sites. It suggests that I change the url of a particular page to match the desired search term I want to rank for. In this case it is a site for a local business and the url is example.com/testimonials. when it probabaly should have instead been example.com/city-business-reviews. I have just a couple links to this page and I'm stuck towards the bottom of page 1 in the SERPs currently. Questions... 1. Should I change the url to include the exact keyword term I want the page to rank for? 2. If yes, what is the best method to ensure that any existing link juice to the current url is retained? Would I change the url, then create a new page with the old url and apply a 301 redirect to point it to the new page? Thanks!
On-Page Optimization | | fastestmanalive0