Changing the permalink estructure, worth the risk in 2017 ?
-
Hello, I have a wordpress blog that have more than 10 years old, when I created the blog the permalink had the date included.
Example: site.com/2007/02/02/my-post/
Do you guys think is it worth the risk of changing my url escructure to remove the date ? Ofcourse I would do the 301 redirects and such...
What I want to know if this will have any significant SEO advantage considering Google evolved so much ?
Thank you very much for reading my question -
Hi,
I wouldn't recommend doing this, it's going to be a lot of work and you probably won't see any benefit. The historical value of those URLs is much stronger than any boost you'd get by taking out a few date folders. It's very common for blogs to have this URL structure, search engines are well aware of this structure and aren't going to ding you for having long or deep folder URLs.
Additionally, since your blog is 10 years old, you've probably got tons of posts, which means tons of 301 redirects. You have to take Google with a grain of salt when they come out and say things like "301s pass all authority now", it doesn't mean you should go out and redirect every page on your site. At some point you're going to begin affecting page speed, particularly on mobile devices.
-
Hey there,
Personally, I'm not a fan of date subfolders, especially if they're split into three. It creates an abnormally deep URL structure that doesn't seem overly logical.
Google have stated that using 301 redirects no longer loses link equity (Check out the link below!) so you wouldn't be at risk of losing any link juice if you did go this way.
https://moz.com/blog/301-redirection-rules-for-seo
In terms of SEO advantage, I would say that putting your articles into 'themed' folders (think /blog/shoes as an example) would help as it would assist search engines in understanding your content, whilst including important keywords within the URL. Gianluca refers to these types of content pods as 'Topical Hubs' and his video is quite entertaining!:
https://moz.com/blog/topical-hubs-whiteboard-friday
Hope this helps,
Sean
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
-
Changing a subdomain to a full domain to rank for a keyword
We have been attempting to get our blogsite to rank for our business name(Instabill). We are now considering changing the url from blog.instabill.com to something like instabillblog.com. I have following concerns about the change; Will changing the domain really be that helpful (i.e. will the change get our blog on page one for the term instabill) We have over 350 pages of content on our blog. Will changing the domain have possible negative effects ( I was thinking of using url updater in webmaster tools and creating a permanent 301 redirect from the older url to the new) Having never changed a url for a site with this much content and seo value for my company I would like to know the following from someone who has made mistakes here before; what not to do what steps you would take to make the transition easier Any help here will be greatly appreciated. cheers, Instabill
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Instabill0 -
Changing content in a well established page.
I have a question i rank well for O'fallon lawn care and I dont rank well for O'Fallon, MO lawn care. Is it ok to go in that page and add some content optimizing it around O'Fallon, MO Lawn care or is that a bad idea. Appreciate any feed back thanks everyone.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | gslc0 -
Changeing Hyperlinks from Do Follow to Do Not Follow
I Have a blog on my website and we do guest post from time to time. I was contacted by a blogger to change the Back links on his Article from Do Follow to Do not Follow. His Article has been live for 5 Months. When I asked him of the reason for that his Answer was that he needs to comply with Google's New Alogarithm ! Has Anyone Had Similar situation or can shed more light on that issue ?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | sherohass0 -
Changing Servers + Effect on SEO
Hi, I am currently with a very slow server. Our website takes quite a while to load, FTP is very slow and content changes with Wordpress are slow because even the database connection takes a lot of time. However, my website ranks very well. Traffic has doubled in the last year. Our domain has been registered with this company for over 10 years. I am wondering if changing to a different hosting provider would have an effect on my rankings due to the change in IP.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | MangoMan160 -
For a UK company is it worth swapping from .com to .co.uk
I currently own the domain lionseo.com and I also own the .co.uk variant some of the keywords I am targeting will have UK in them. My thoughts are that a .co.uk may help improve rankings on google.co.uk and click through + have a keyword match in the home page URL. **Do you guys think it's worth swapping to the .co.uk domain from .com? ** Thanks in advance 🙂 Keith
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | SEOKeith0 -
Our URLs have changed. Do we request our external links be updated as well?
Hello Forum, We've re-launched our website with a new, SEO-friendly URL structure. We have also set up 301 redirects from our old URLs to the new ones. Now, is there any benefit to asking those external websites that link to us to update their links with our new URLs? What is the SEO best practice? Thanks for your insight.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | pano0 -
301 - do i change old links once 301 is in place?
Hey all, I'm about to setup a 301 on a website that has pretty good SEO rankings and I have the ability to change all the old inbound links that point to the old site, to the new site - should I leave them pointing to the old site that has the 301 on it or change all the old inbound links to the new domain name? Which has better SEO value? Thanks for helping, Anthony
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Grenadi0 -
Will changing domain registration details affect ranking?
Hi all, I've got a .co.uk site that I want to update the domain registrant account details for. The change will involve registering the domain to a limited company name rather than an individual and possibly changing the registered address. Does anyone know whether this could affect google rankings? I've heard of stories of sites losing their PR because the registrant details have changed and I don't really want that to happen! Thanks in advance for any help
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | PeterAlexLeigh0