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Switching URL Formats for SEO

by birdman87
7 replies
  • SEO
    • |
Hi

I have a website that really does well and is finally turning into a full-time income. This is amazing after years of dabbling in internet marketing. It's certainly taken a year of earning nothing and working my arse off to get here. It currently has 21 pages but I'm going to be turning it into a massive site with loads of content.

I made a cock up of biblical proportions when I first created it.

I know that even google says the preferred way to create page titles is to use a hyphen (-) to indicate a space in a word. I never did this. The website is currently doing well. I have about 6 articles to add and I'm not sure how to go forward with this site now.

Part of me says don't change things and continue as you left off. The other part says to get it right from now on.

What would you guys recommend going forward? Keep doing as I'm doing or change the way I'm doing it?

Appreciate any feedback, thanks.
#formats #seo #switching #url
  • Profile picture of the author stephabel
    For what it's worth I would create all new pages with dashes and leave the current pages untouched unless there have no inbound links.

    If this is becoming your full-time income it might not be worth risking a loss of all inbound links.

    Duplicating existing pages is an option but what about duplicate content?

    Personally I would not rename the URL of any pages that bring customers in.
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    • Profile picture of the author birdman87
      Thanks for the reply

      I wasn't planning on changing the existing one's. I was wondering whether to change any future one's. Not sure whether Google would see a discontinuity with it (if that's even a word).

      Thanks again.
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  • Profile picture of the author TheContentAuthority
    Birdman87,

    Considering the hundreds of factors that Google (and other engines) use to rank your site, it probably will not make much difference if you change all your title tags to include a hyphen.

    However in contrast, if you are trying to rank for certain keyword phrases, you may be missing out by leaving out hyphens. For instance you will be able to rank for a variety of keywords while listing them only once in the title tag. You could rank for the keyword web design and webdesign by writing web-design.

    I would recommend changing them if you can utilize these extra ranking opportunities and leaving them if not.

    Check out this list of title tag optimization tips,

    15 Title Tag Optimization Guidelines For Usability and SEO | Usability Geek

    Hope that helps you,

    Shawn
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    Outsource to the experts...

    We customize your Blog, eBook, Press Release and Sale Copy content with your message.

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  • Profile picture of the author UMS
    21 pages isn't too many to change.

    You could simply recreate the pages with a hyphen in the URL and do a 301 permanent redirect from the non-hyphenated page to the hyphenated page.
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    • Profile picture of the author birdman87
      Do you have any idea how much link juice will I be likely to loose through doing that? I heard once that it was around 10% but I'm not sure.
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      • Profile picture of the author stephabel
        Originally Posted by birdman87 View Post

        Do you have any idea how much link juice will I be likely to loose through doing that? I heard once that it was around 10% but I'm not sure.
        So do not change the existing pages.

        If you are using WP here is one of the possible solutions.

        Visit the 21 pages using your browser.

        For each page, copy the source to your hard disk.

        Change the settings on WP and now all your old and new pages are hyphenized

        Upload the 21 previous pages without the hyphen and put a link to them somewhere so the SE know they're still live. Old links will still go to them.

        Have fun.
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      • Profile picture of the author UMS
        Originally Posted by birdman87 View Post

        Do you have any idea how much link juice will I be likely to loose through doing that? I heard once that it was around 10% but I'm not sure.
        There is a small amount of link juice lost. I don't think anyone can give specific figures, but I'd be surprised if it was as high as 10%.
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