Pros and Cons of Updating Your Website URLs

Updating your website URLs may sound like a hassle. After all, you already spent enough time generating all of your website's links. 

So why go through the process again? Well, it could potentially boost your online traffic. SEO rules are always changing, and your website's URLs might not be designed to rank as well as they could. 

However, updating website URLs will be better suited to some businesses than others. Get a sense of whether it's time for your business to update its URLs with our list of pros and cons below.

Pros:

Improves Ranking According to Google's Latest Rules

Updating your website URLs will increase your site's overall search engine optimization or SEO. This is the practice of using targeted strategies to make your website more likely to appear in a search engine's top results and ultimately bring traffic to your pages. 

Creating dynamic URLs that are brief and contain keywords is a classic SEO strategy that experts still count on. This can be a tedious and detail-oriented process, but professional SEO consulting can help you get the right URL and SEO content to optimize your site.

Keep Your Content Fresh

Perhaps you already created optimized URLs based on the best SEO practices. Unfortunately, Google is known to change its rules of what ranks frequently. As a result, your URLs might not be best suited to rank as well as they could with an update. 

Keep your content fresh with new URLs that are designed with the latest SEO standards in mind.

Your URL can be Altered and made Unique for Your Page

The best way to increase the number of visitors to your site is by having a URL that matches your site's content. The good news is that URLs are flexible and can be adjusted until they're just right for your page and Google's algorithm. 

However, this process requires a lot of time to make sure all of your 301-redirects, XML sitemaps, and on-page links are effective.

Cons:

Previous Site Visitors may not know the new URL

When you change your previously established URL, it can be more difficult for previous site visitors to find your content. This is because your previous domain URL might be used for another site after you move. You can work around this by adding your updated web URLs to a Google business account

This will make it easier for Google to find your website/company and add it to the results section for those searching for your services/website. 

This way, Google will show your profile to previous page visitors and searchers interested in what you offer. It will also benefit from your location services as well. For example, if you have a physical location for your businesses and services, then it will appear on Google maps for those nearby or in the area searching for keywords related to your website.

New URLs Take Time to Index

Changing your URLs works for many businesses and brings them the traffic boost they were looking for. However, know that you might not see results right away because it takes Google time to index your pages. 

You might see a temporary drop in rankings, but give Google time to crawl and sort your updated URLs before deciding if this was an effective strategy.

Final Thoughts

Updating your URLs can increase your rankings on Google in a few simple steps. It's an opportunity to create new keywords and attract users to fresh content. 

However, not every business owner has the time to update URLs. You may confuse previous users that were familiar with your previous URLs, and you'll also have to be patient while Google indexes your new content. Instead of trying to tackle running your business and changing URLs, we recommend working with a specialist or outsourcing this task. 

You'll benefit from new URLs while still focusing on operations.