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 sitemaps in console
Hi there, Does anyone have any experience submitting a completely new sitemap structure - including URLs - to google console? We've changed our sitemap plug in, so rather than /sitemap-index.xml, our main sitemap home is /sitemap.xml (as an example). Is it better to 410 the old ones or 301 redirect them to the new sitemaps? If 301, what do we do about sitemaps that don't completely correlate - what was divided into item1.xml, item2.xml is now by date so items-from-2015.xml, items-from-2016.xml and so on. On a related note, am I right in thinking that there's no longer a "delete/ remove sitemap" option on console? In which case, what happens to the old ones which will now 404? Thanks anyone for any insight you may have 🙂
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Fubra0 -
Archiving Blog Posts To Another Category Changes Permalink But Does It Affect SEO?
I'm launching a website that will give daily updates. The /daily/ category needs to be kept clear for the current day updates only, so each day I will be archiving the previous days updates to another folder, for example: /archive/. Each morning, when I archive the previous days post... the system will 301 the current url from /daily/ to /archive/ and the sitemap will be updated to reflect the change. What I am concerned about is my site will be packed with 301's and the information is more important on the day so I would expect the majority of backlinks + social shares will be to the /daily/ category url and visitors will be 301'd to the new url. How would this affect my SEO and is there a cleaner way to do this so?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | AjazMozPro1 -
Name change to include a keyword?
Hello All...Just signed up for the 30 day trial with Moz. I am a wedding photographer here in the UK. If I was to change my company name to Simon Cook Wedding Photography from Simon Cook Photography, will this help my presence in anyway?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Simon_Cook0 -
Pagination loading with using AJAX. Should I change this?
Hello, while I was checking this site; http://www.disfracessimon.com/disfraces-adultos-16.html I found that the pagination is working this way http://www.disfracessimon.com/disfraces-adultos-16.html#/page-2
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | teconsite
http://www.disfracessimon.com/disfraces-adultos-16.html#/page-3 and content is being loaded using AJAX. So, google is not getting the paginated results. Is this a big issue or there is no problem?
Should I create a link for See All Products or there is not a big issue? Thank you!0 -
Any Good XML Sitemaps Generator?
I was wondering if everyone could recommend what XML Sitemap generators they use. I've been using XML-Sitemap, and it's been a little hit and miss for me. Some sites it works great, other it really has serious problems indexing pages. I've also uses Google's, but unfortunately it's not very flexible to use. Any recommendation would be much appreciated.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | alrockn0 -
Bad links
Well just set up SEO Moz to find out someone thought it funny to build a load of links to our site http://bluetea.com.au/ with the anchor txt "Buy Cocks" .... PLEASE PLEASE let me know how much I should worry about this and how can I get rid of it?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Intrested0 -
Change of web hosting?
Does change of web hosting have any effects on a websites SEO?and what are the factors that need to be taken care off while changing web hosting company in terms of seo perspective.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | HiteshBharucha0 -
How does Google see an article in two languages?
Hi, We are translating our articles into French (they are already in English) and are considering Cantonese & Mandarin. How does Google see this? Say I post an article on Diabetes Symptoms in English, Cantonese and French. Same article, different languages. Does Google look at this as three separate articles, ranking you uniquely, or does it count as one article? Thanks, Erin
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | erinhealthchoices0