Would changing permalink structure of 7,500 articles be good or bad?
-
Morning everyone,
I'm the tech at a large men's lifestyle publisher and we're currently running the old /year/month/ URL structure in Wordpress.
Now I've read countless articles about pro's and con's of month date vs post type formats (/2016/06/sample-post/ vs /sample-post/) and considering we produce both evergreen and daily news content we're stuck with making a decision.
Currently we receive about 10,000 organic referrals per day (has been stuck at this for 12 months) but considering we have 7,500 articles, have 10 full-time staff and have been around for close to 7 years we think we're underperforming.
Now providing we 301 redirect every old article to the new structure is there any other reason not to do this change?
Any advice would be appreciated.
-
If you are changing the URL of your evergreen content each time you update it and then 301 redirecting the old URL to the new, that could definitely be impacting the organic traffic potential of that content. I would recommend keeping pages at the same URL even after updating them - so it may make sense, for your frequently-updated pages, to move them to a page without the date stamp in the URL so that you're not republishing and moving the page.
-
Great feedback, guys. Thank you.
The articles are mostly news related so there's not a whole lot of reason to keep them, however we tend to have people dig fairly deep into topics such as cars or watches. This content tends to be timeless.
REASON FOR THE INITIAL QUESTION
We have however also seemed to hit a wall with organic traffic. We did think this was perhaps because of having too many articles on the site but we're not too sure.
We get 10k organic referrals per day, everyday. It fluctuates maybe +-100 but it's like it's we're stuck at a ceiling.... hence the reason we're looking at changing link structure to maybe help move this imaginary log jam.
Some of our in-house practices
Old evergreen articles are always being update
URLs updated so date stamp is more recent - then 301 redirect put in place
Major newspapers and high authority websites regularly linking to use for 'expert advice'We seem to be doing everything by the book but something's stopping our growth.... maybe changing all the URLs and the structure may not help.
-
Good question, and you should be aware that recent large scale 301 redirect campaigns have shown a small loss (around 15%) of total link authority.
However, Google has said repeatedly that 301 redirects dilute the same amount of PageRank as it would through a regular link. Matt Cutts said this most recently in a 2013 YouTube video that has a clear discussion on the matter. Basically, what this means is that to Google the "loss in PageRank from 301 redirects is so minimal it's not an issue webmasters should even worry about."
Based on that statement, your next question on a large-scale URL change needs to be NOT SEO-focused, but UX-focused:
- Will the URL change impact your users?
- Will that URL change be a POSITIVE impact for users?
Personally, I think the most important question you need to ask yourself though isn't making the change. But AFTER you make the change can you really justify keeping 7500+ articles?
Let's be honest, are you REALLY sure all 7500 articles are high-quality? We know that even a small amount of thin or low-quality content on a domain can effect the performance of all the content, so maybe a focused content audit needs to be a priority?
Have you reviewed closely the Google Search Console Search Queries information for your articles? Any article on your site that hasn't generate traffic in 28 days is not a "high-quality article." That's the content you'd want to focus on specifically. Can that content be updated, improved and republished? Or is that content better CUT AWAY COMPLETELY from the domain so that other content has a better chance of improvement?
Just something to think about. Hope this was useful. Good luck!
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 existing URL to boost SEO
What's best practice regarding changing URLs for SEO? If the page contains great information around a particular term but the URL is not reflective of this and thus the page isn't ranking should the URL be changed? Or is it always a hard and fast no? It would seem to make sense to me if the page didn't have any backlinks already and Organic clicks were minimal. Sam
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Samsam00000 -
E-commerce catalog structuring for SEO
We have about 10 high-level product categories with 100's of products from different suppliers. What is the best way to structure our product catalog and content to drive SEO? Basically, we get all our content from the manufacturer and want to make sure we are setting up the product pages and structure correctly. Any ideas or sites that do it very well? Thank you! 🙂
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Jamesmcd030 -
How to change URL structure in google webmasters
Is there any way to ask google to indexed the website in following URL structure abc.com/category/postname (I have this structure on my website) But Currently google indexed my website posts as - abc.com/postname/category How I can tell google to follow the right structure?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Michael.Leonard0 -
URL Structure For E-commerce Sites
Hi Guys, I was wondering what would be the optimal and best URL structure for sub-categories on a E-commerce site for SEO purposes. Example if my category was dresses and I had multiple sub-categories within dresses would 1 or 2 below be the better URL structure? 1) Domain + Category + Sub-Category be the most suitable URL structure: Sleeveless Dresses URL: clothingstore.com/dresses/sleeveless-dresses Midi Dresses URL: clothingstore.com/dresses/midi-dresses 2) OR would excluding the category be better Domain + Sub-Category like: Sleeveless Dresses URL: clothingstore.com/sleeveless-dresses Midi Dresses URL: clothingstore.com/midi-dresses Do you think it makes much of a difference, is shorter better and more effective in this case? E.g. Rand discuses in this article: https://mza.seotoolninja.com/blog/15-seo-best-practices-for-structuring-urls that having the keyword in the URL serves as anchor text, so wouldn't having additional keywords dilute value in this case? Plus he mentions shorter URLs the better. Cheers, Chris
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | jayoliverwright1 -
Are pop-unders bad for SEO?
Hi all, I run a travel site that specializes in hotel bookings. We're working with a third-party advertiser to launch a pop-under unit when someone searches for hotels on our site. (This unit is of the "also try your search on these competing sites" variety.) I'm worried, however, that this might affect our SEO, especially in light of this on their site: https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/2721313?hl=en Would Google even see these pop-unders? (Are pop-unders treated the same as pop-overs?) And, if so, would G see them as unwanted and treat them as a nuisance? Could it lead to negative SEO consequences? Any thoughts would be appreciated. Thanks! Tom
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | TomNYC0 -
Possible for SERP appearance to change on a keyword?
Hi, We're currently working with a brand name which happens to be the name of a small town in the US (126 population). When Googling the brand / town name, there's a map on the right-hand side of the SERP. (Google Maps, with the town highlighted) We're based in Sweden, and this is even showing up on a search on the Swedish Google. I'm wondering; Is it possible for the map to "be removed" as our brand becomes more known? Does anyone have any similar experiences? Is it a better idea to just switch brand name?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | JSTRANDELL0 -
Is hidden content bad for SEO?
I am using this plugin to enable Facebook comments on my blog:
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | soralsokal
https://wordpress.org/plugins/fatpanda-facebook-comments/ This shows the comment in an Facebook iFrame. The plugin author claims it's SEO friendly, because the comments are also integrated in the WordPress database. The are included in the post but hidden. Is that bad for SEO?0 -
Duplicate content in Webmaster tools, is this bad?
We launched a new site, and we did a 301 redirect to every page. I have over 5k duplicate meta tags and title tags. It shows the old page and the new page as having the same title tag and meta description. This isn't true, we changed the titles and meta description, but it still shows up like that. What would cause that?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | EcommerceSite0