Moz Q&A is closed.
After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.
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
-
Virtual URL Google not indexing?
Dear all, We have two URLs: The main URL which is crawled both by GSC and where Moz assigns our keywords is: https://andipaeditions.com/banksy/ The second one is called a virtual url by our developpers: https://andipaeditions.com/banksy/signedandunsignedprintsforsale/ This is currently not indexed by Google. We have been linking to the second URL and I am unable to see if this is passing juice/anything on to the main one /banksy/ Is it a canonical? The /banksy/ is the one that is being picked up in serps/by Moz and worry that the two similar URLs are splitting the signal. Should I redirect from the second to the first? Thank you
On-Page Optimization | | TAT1000 -
Home page keyword in url
I have been looking into SEO for a few weeks now trying to perfect a homepage. Going through various sources on MOZ, and other examples out there on the internet, I keep seeing that you should have your keyword in the URL of the page. The homepage is the page most people want to rank the highest in google searches, however, you cannot put the keyword in the URL as most home page URLs are simply /. Should I actually make the home like this: www.example.com/key-word-example? I would imagine this would not be the normal for many users and would seem like it's not the home page.
On-Page Optimization | | Matthew_smart0 -
When I changes Template, why traffic goes down?
I've noticed that when I change my blog's template the traffic goes down dramatically, about of 40% decrease. I know that new themes can have some problems but I have tried this with 2 different themes. First try was with genesis framework(Paid one) and just in one day traffic went down and when I reverted the old theme, the traffic became normal. Should I wait for 1 week to see what happens? What could be the potential reason of this?
On-Page Optimization | | hammadrafique0 -
Why I am ranking for irrelevant keywords
My website is e-commerce and used to rank for all industry related keywords like buy widgets, cheap widgets, online widgets in top10. And suddenly my website was hacked and to resolve this hacking issue i have re-write all my dynamic urls into static pages after that new pages are indexed and ranking well. But after few months i have notice few changes in keywords ranking going down. But suddenly after Google Algo (EMD/Panda) update on Sept 27 i lost all my positions. And then according to Google guidelines i have worked on over optimization and low quality pages. I have removed all tones of low quality pages from SERP and simultaneously worked on url re-write. But i have notice small percent of changes in keyword positions like when Google Algo (EMD/Panda) is rolled out i lost my keyword positions from 1st page to 200 page and after working on over optimization and low quality pages the keywords are came back to 100 pages. Recently i have notice that my web pages ranking for irrelevant keywords. For example, let's say i used to rank for home page for these keywords; buy widgets, cheap widgets, online widgets but now am ranking for different inner pages say (guide pages). Can any one suggest me whats wrong..
On-Page Optimization | | BipSum0 -
Can you change meta description at any time without loosing rankings?
I'm wondering if it is possible to change the meta description of a page on your site at any time without it affecting rankings on google? Is it only changing how my SERP looks? Or could bad things happen to changing your meta description? Appreciate all opinions on this one, thank you guys!
On-Page Optimization | | danielpett0 -
URL for location pages
Hello all We would like to create clean, easy URLs for our large list of Location pages. If there are a few URLs for each of the pages, am I right when I'm saying we would like this to be the canonical? Right now we would like the URL to be: For example
On-Page Optimization | | Ferguson
Domain.com/locations/Columbus I have found some instances where there might be 2,3 or more locations in the same city,zip. My conclusion for these would be: adding their Branch id's on to the URL
Domain.com/locations/Columbus/0304 Is this an okay approach? We are unsure if the URL should have city,State,zip for SEO purposes?
The pages will have all of this info in it's content
BUT what would be best for SEO and ranking for a given location? Thank you for any info!0 -
301 redirect and then keywords in URL
Hi, Matt Cutts says that 301 redirects, including the ones on internal pages, causes the loss of a little bit of link juice. But also, I know that keywords in the URL are very important. On our site, we've got unoptimized URLs (few keywords) in the internal pages. Is it worth doing a 301 redirect in order to optimize the URLs for each main page. 301 redirects are the only way we can do it on our premade cart For example (just an example) say our main (1 of the 4) keywords for the page is "brown shoes". I'm wondering if I should redirect something like shoes.com/shoecolors.html to shoes.com/brown-shoes.html In other words, with the loss of juice would we come out ahead? In what instances would we come out ahead?
On-Page Optimization | | BobGW0 -
Change in Product Name
My site - http://www.guru99.com/quick-test-professional-qtp-tutorial.html Currently caters to an automation testing product from HP called Quick Test Professional popularly know and searched as QTP Recently HP changed the product name from QTP to HP Functional Test. Considering this , what do I do with exiting QTP pages and how do I optimize the site moving ahead...
On-Page Optimization | | krishrun0