Should you change your website URLs for SEO?

Recently, John Mueller from Google warned website owners not to change URLs for their content for SEO. However, it turns out that this is not always the case. Let’s explore some exceptions to this rule.

Mueller said that changing the URLs of your website’s content rarely has any SEO benefits. He continued, saying that if you can’t copy and paste the URLs, then it may be best to change them.

It was also discussed that if you do change your URLs, it could cause a negative affect for a while until the URLs are reprocessed by the Google servers.

What are the best URL formats?

If you are using WordPress or a similar CMS like Joomla, you’ll more than likely already have a well-designed URL structure.
Examples of URL formats that are good are:

Domain.com/post-title
Domain.com/topic/post-title
Domain.com/topic/sub-topic/post-title

If your URLs look something like the above, then it’s best to just leave them as they are absolutely fine.

What are bad URL formats?

There are some URLs that could be harmful for your SEO including:
Domain.com/p?=123
Domain.com/2022/11/01/post-title
Domain.com/keyword1-keyword-2/keyword1/keyword2-keyword1
Domain.com/category/sub-category/topic/sub-topi/very-long-title?id=121333&utm_source=Twitter&utm_campaign=social

These types of URLs are still common on many websites, so it’s best to look into changing these to the better URL formats shown above.

To conclude, changing your website’s URLs can sometimes be a good idea, especially if they are spammy like some of the examples above. Another reason is if they have no context to the content that is on that page, as URLs are used by search engines to understand the topic of your content.

If you’d like to find out more about how you can grow your business online, have a chat with our friendly team to discuss how we can help you with an effective digital marketing strategy tailored to your business or industry. Get in touch with us today.

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Jonathon Roberts

Jonathon lives and breathes marketing, boasting a degree in Business Management and Marketing Management and a diverse list of experiences both professional and voluntary. Having grown up in the thick of the digital and social media age, he has been quick to dive into online marketing and search engine optimisation in his career and spare time, spanning such fields as academics, local business and sport.

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