Here are common SEO questions when someone wants to change domain or page URL.
1) Will it affect the SEO ranking if changing the website domain, page URL, permalink structure or remove page?
2) How search engines interpret website domain and page URL changing
3) How to make SEO ranking will not be affected too much?
If you have one or more of these questions, take a look at the following suggestions and get them fixed.
Will the URLs/domain change affect SEO?
Refer to question 1, the answer is: “Yes, it will”. In fact, as long as the URL changes, there will be some impact on the SEO, and the ranking may also fluctuate, but you can do a lot of things to reduce the negative impact of the URL change.
How search engines interpret page URL and website domain changing?
Basically, the search engine only recognizes the URL no matter it is a page URL or a website domain. As long as the URL is changed, the search engine will not be so smart to know which the page still exists but moved, replaced the URL/domain.
How to make SEO ranking will not be affected too much? 3 steps to let Google aware of the page URLs changing?
1) Update all website internal links
First of all, update all website internal links including the navigation bar, sidebar, footer and product list. The search engine knows our website through these links on the website. If the URL changes, please be sure to update all the URLs on the pages to reduce all internal broken links occur.
2) Use 301 Permanent redirect
Actually, it is difficult to fix all broken links especially the external links. If you need to change the page URLs or website domain, we recommend that you move to a new location with 301 permanent redirect. A 301 redirect known as a permanent redirect, for SEO purpose, this is the best way to redirect the old page from Google’s index to the new one. In fact, 301 redirect is required for SEO far more frequently. When you move or delete pages on your website, you might need to do this otherwise it might face with the broken links or 404 error pages. Some tips about 301 redirect you need to know.
First, if you use 301 redirect URL, you must ensure that the content of the page for the 301 redirect must be consistent. For example,
O www.domain_xxx.com/post_a – > 301 redirect to –> www. domain_xxx.com/category/post_a
As the redirect content is the same, the SEO weight will be passed to the new URL normally.
Second, if you want to use 301 redirect from post_a redirect to post_b, the SEO weight will not be fully delivered and it might affect the website SEO negatively.
X www. domain_xxx.com/post_a – > 301 redirect to –> www.domain_xxx.com/post_b
3) Update sitemap
Having updated all the internal links and used 301 redirect, the last but most important step we need to do is update the sitemap. You must remove all old URLs, replace them with new URLs and resubmit to Google Console. Basically, the search engine will arrange website crawler to crawl the website using the new sitemap. The sitemap can help search engine quickly understand your site.
Conclusion
After the redirect is executed, the old URL of the page will gradually disappear into the search engine. Instead, the new URL will appear in the ranking. As per the mentioned above, as long as the URL changes, there will be some impact on the SEO, and the ranking may also fluctuate. However, if you can follow the above recommendation, it will reduce the negative impact of the URL change a lot.
Furthermore, please note that the search engine is a program that concerns the content of the webpage very much. Whether the content is high-quality, high-relevant is closely related to SEO ranking. If you are good at changing the content, site structure at the same time as the URL, it may have a positive impact for the SEO.
If you want to know more about our SEO service, contact our SEO experts for details.