In this web world, every URL should be optimized perfectly from the very first day. There may be a myriad of reasons for which you might need to change a URL– maybe it is for the first time that a page is optimized or it may be for complying with the change people search these days or for some other modification in the SEO world. But does changing the URL affect the search engine ranks in any way?
Well, it does. Change in URL largely affects the ranking since every search engine has a different way of responding to the changes. However, there are ways to limit this. Google is the leading search engine that can deal with URL change effectively. If you want successful redirecting of URL and domain forwarding, you should ensure that the ALL links of the old page from other websites and directories are upgraded.
This is a critical element that you must fulfill. However, you may face some problems in this since the sites in which the link is maybe abandoned or neglected. Google provides some basic guidelines to follow while you plan to change the URL. Don’t forget that the URL you change has some significant links which you surely will not like to lose.
Check out these 4 steps when modifying the URL to maintain strong internal link architecture, a tidy URL structure, and link equity.
1. 301 Redirects
301 redirecting of the old URL to a new URL is crucial for the passing of the external links’ power to your new URL. This is also effective for search engine spiders in finding the new webpage, transferring the power of the old page to a new web page and indexing a new URL.
2. URL Normalization
As you know the best structure for a URL is to keep all the characters in the lowercase and separate each word by a hyphen. If you are following any other trend in the URL structure, revert to this current practice. You must make sure that the new page and present URL match each other.
3. Legacy Redirects
If there are legacy redirects pointing to the old URL, make sure that you correct it. This is something that is often overlooked when you are changing your URL structure for a page.
4. Internal Linking
With a changed URL, it is necessary that you point all your internal links to the new URL instead of the old one. Do you know that the internal links are very crucial in the sense that it notifies the search engine regarding the page that is important on the site? Neglecting this change of the internal linking will ultimately lead the search engine spider to follow an incorrect URL.
Correct your internal linking and get the quickest way of entering the deeper page of your site. Also, the search engine spider gets benefitted from this. So, you should not miss this crucial step…These are some of the basic steps you must abide by when you are changing a URL if you want to have the best results.