Personally, I change old, harmful or long web addresses (aka URLs) when updating existing content quite often.
What did Google’s John Mueller say about changing URLs for SEO?
Before we dive in, let’s take a look at what seems to be the official Google position on changing URLs for SEO. It is quoted from a tweet by John Mueller, Search Advocate at Google, as a link between webmasters and the search giant.
As reported by Barry Schwartz on Search Engine Roundtable, Mueller said that the risk is much higher than the possible reward when changing URLs (for SEO reasons):
“(…) Does it help the site? Very, very rarely (if they have terrible URLs that you might not even be able to copy & paste). Will a change negatively affect the site for a while until it is reprocessed? Probably .Some risk + usually no profit.
How does a proper URL look in the first place?
Let’s start with the ideal state of your URL.
In case you use WordPress or a similar CMS, you most likely already have a well-designed URL structure according to current standards.
The examples below are all good:
Does your URL look like this? Congratulations! You most likely don’t need to change anything!
It’s just like Mueller said: the risk of changing a URL would outweigh any perceived benefit.
Examples of potentially harmful URL structures
Custom websites and even content management systems from the early days often create malicious website addresses.
You may even be running a legacy WordPress site that still has some mistakes from the past embedded.
Does your website address look like some of the potentially harmful examples below?
All of these were quite common until a few years back, so you can still have a site with a less optimal URL structure than any of the above.
Even with website builders and complex enterprise-level CMS software, you may have additional problems.
Sometimes website builders like Weebly or Squarespace add gibberish to filenames when dealing with special characters from foreign languages.
URL parameters that often contain other website names or even addresses (such as utm_source=Twitter.com) are very confusing. They can even trick scripts on third-party sites where you share content.
When to change URLs for SEO reasons
So when can you change URLs? Ideally, never – not just for SEO reasons. It’s “never change a running system” as an old computer geek motto says.
However, we do not live in an ideal world (and I understand that Mueller’s tweet is too short to add any exceptions). So here we will go over instances when it is OK to change URLs.
Sometimes the URLs are completely bonkers as in the example of Patrick Cunningham on LinkedIn:
Below is a classic comparison of typical URL structures from Moz.
Personally, I also change less dirty URLs. Why?
First, I shortened long URLs when updating existing content on WordPress regularly. For SEO reasons, a very long URL like this:
First, the URL itself is now a negligible ranking factor. As you might expect, experts are divided on this question.
The most obvious SEO advantage of clean URLs is that they contain (just) keywords in them and no redundant “stop words.”
So when someone links to your URL (as many automated systems do – think aggregators), you get rich anchor text links that benefit you in Google’s organic results.
Also, people are more likely to click on them and thus notice, share and link to your content.
… is less likely to attract visitors than:
After updating the existing content, you may find that the current URL no longer reflects the original message. It may even be that the updated article says the opposite of what it said before.
A legacy article, such as example.com/google-plus-launched, could be changed to example.com/google-plus-discontinued to reflect the current reality.
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Direct SEO benefit is not the only reason to change, optimize or fix your URLs. There are at least three often more important.
When people talk about SEO, they often limit their SEO definition to something like “technical SEO optimization for Google.”
So, when I suggest doing something for actual visitors, many clients scream “No” and tell me “but that’s not SEO.” That’s why they don’t want to pay for it.
The logic behind it seems to be very old school as in “who cares about actual visitors if Google likes it”? Nowadays, this approach no longer works well.
Google now considers a myriad of ranking factors, many of which can be subsumed under the umbrella of user experience (UX).
Convincing Google that you need to rank at the top of its organic results is only the first step.
You need to allow people to find the actual resource they are looking for, use it without difficulty and ideally share it.
Findability
Findability is about SEO. It ensures that things can also be found on the spot.
If you have a complex website with many sections, topics and categories, you can ensure that they are reflected in the URL so that visitors know where they are located.
A simple URL like example.com/post-title may not be enough, especially if there are many similar resources.
Consider a post title and address this: Google struggles.
Imagine a site that covers Google in many different sections:
Depending on the context, the content of the article can cover something completely different:
Your site may have started years ago and grown significantly over time. You may have added thousands of articles and until now it is difficult to find them on the site by relying on the post title.
Consider changing your URLs to make content on your site more discoverable, especially if many people use your internal search to navigate the site.
Usability
Some argue that findability is just a subset of usability. For me, you have to find something first to use the second.
Again, overly long or cryptic URLs that appear in the browser’s address bar may not be helpful. Just compare these two examples from Amazon:
Which one of them is more usable? I think you get the point.
Both the German and the .com link to the same product (because the id “1501197983” is the same).
If you just see the URL in the address bar, you have no way of knowing what the cryptic leads to.
Most people have more than one tab open in their browser. Sometimes you want to quickly decide which tabs to close.
If you scroll down to see the reviews on Amazon (the only original content they have), you won’t know what product you’re looking at when you look at the page in the address bar.
When I research products on Amazon and have many tabs open, I tend to close other tabs because of it.
Also, if it wasn’t for the globally recognized brand, it would look like some kind of creepy phishing site.
Does your URL look like the first example above? You have a usability problem to fix.
So you found something and were able to use it. Now you love it and want to share it.
Or maybe you’ve already researched it for someone else (like your elderly parent) and now want to share your findings.
You can see some sharing buttons that you can use, but in many cases you just want to copy and paste a link (or rather URL) to send by mail or instant messenger, think:
Sharing long URLs can look like this:
On my own page I also add an easy way to copy and paste a link. Most sites do not. Rather, they promote third party sites. So what you do is:
Many things can go wrong when sharing, so that the link does not reach its destination without breaking.
Often it is also not attractive enough to entice the recipient to click it.
A number-only URL filled with all kinds of gibberish like the above example may even prevent someone from printing it because it looks suspicious.
Does your URL make it very difficult to copy, paste and share? You then have to change it.
As you probably noticed, all of these reasons are also “SEO reasons.”
If visitors can’t find, use, or share your links because of poor URL structure, they’re less likely to spread the word about your content, products, or services.
At the end of the day, you will get less exposure and ultimately links.
How to change URLs without hurting your SEO too much
Now that you’ve found out that your site is indeed one of the few exceptions where a change in URLs is advisable for SEO reasons – what’s next?
How do you actually change URLs without damaging your SEO?
Be descriptive
Just using cryptic numbers like “1501197983” in your URLs won’t cut it.
Make your URLs as descriptive as possible. You can keep the number for technical reasons (as explained below), but add the speed of what the page is about the URL slug. In our case it is something like:
Forget keyword-stuffing
The “SEO reasons” Mueller said are probably adding keywords to URLs to “rank better.” In the distant past, many people would do this. Today it is rather counterproductive.
A URL slug like /change-url-seo is already keyword rich.
I ranked top 10 on Google for the phrase [url seo] for years and the URL was much less clean than back then.
Add a number
WordPress and most other CMSs (internally) require a number to find a resource. So if you don’t have one in the URL, it will be mapped internally (and even slow your site down a bit).
Also, if you change URLs too radically, WordPress may not be able to correctly map the URL to the resource.
The solution is simple and a compromise, you add both the number and the self-explanatory URL slug, as in:
The following will all lead to the same article:
So, sharing long URLs via mail or IM is also less likely to break the link.
Use hyphens (no other special characters)
Ideally, hyphens should be the only special characters in URLs (just like example.com/hyphenated-url).
If your system requires other characters for technical reasons, be sure to find out if they are supported by Google and what they mean.
Use 301 redirect
When you move in real life, you will most likely tell your clients or customers your new address.
On the Internet it is similar but even easier. You need to use a redirect to tell both visitors and Google spiders where you are now.
Almost the same process applies if just one page of your site moves or if the entire domain is replaced (eg if your business changes its name).
There are many techniques to redirect a page or entire site, but only one of them really works for both visitors and Google at the same time. It’s a 301 redirect. You just have to implement it.
If your site runs WordPress or other modern CMSs, a 301 will be applied automatically in most cases – unless the new URL is so different that the CMS can no longer assign it correctly.
Here is an example of a URL redirected by simply using the URL Slug feature of WordPress on my blog.
After shortening it, I simply checked to see if the post still shows up when reloaded or throws an error.
Then you can use third party redirect tools. On WordPress, there are many different ones. I use Redirection by John Godley, which is free and has been downloaded over 2 million times.
Some all-in-one tools like Yoast SEO also offer this (as a premium) feature. On Yoast it is called Redirect Manager.
Manually add your URL in Search Console
This is probably the risk Mueller wanted to warn website owners about in the first place.
If you change the URL – and assuming the 301 redirects are working properly – it may still take a long time for Google to find and index the new address.
Whether Google crawls it quickly or over time depends on the overall authority and even the size of your site. Changing the URL in your XML sitemap can take care of that, but you can’t be sure.
So if you are in a hurry or want to minimize the risk of losing valuable organic reach, it is advisable to manually tell Google through the search console that a resource has moved and where it is now.
Opinions expressed in this article are those of the guest author and not necessarily Search Engine Land. Staff authors are listed here.
Tadeusz Szewczyk, also known as Tad Chef, has been a professional blogger and SEO since 2004. Although based in Berlin, Germany, he has been covering blogs, social media and search for a global audience since 2006. In 2007 he started his own blog – SEO 2.0 – and since then has published on many other marketing blogs. In recent years, he has also written for the social media accounts of many clients. You can connect with Tad on LinkedIn and Twitter or visit his website and read his blog on social SEO.