How To Change URLs In WordPress Without Losing Rankings
In the process of improving your website’s SEO performance, creating SEO-friendly URLs is one of the must-do elements. Lots of URLs will be changed. It’s important that you do this the right way, as you can lose SEO value you have built over time. In this article, we’ll discuss why this can hurt your SEO, what a 301-redirection is, how to change URLs in WordPress, and to check your internal linking structure after the changes are made.
If you’re interested in all the elements on your page to improve your website’s SEO performance, I recommend you to read my complete on-page SEO guide for small businesses.
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Why Changing Your URL Structure Hurts Your SEO
When you’re changing your page’s URL, you change the address where search engines and visitors find your content. If the old URL doesn’t get a proper redirect, search engines get confused about where the page has gone. That confusion within search engines leads to a decrease in your page’s ranking.
The old, existing URLs built up some SEO value over time. Without a redirect, that SEO value gets lost, as it doesn’t transfer to the new URL automatically. As a consequence, the page has to build SEO value from 0 again.
The smallest change in the URL can cause problems already.
What’s A 301-Redirections
A 301-redirection is a way to permanently send visitors from one URL to another. It tells search engines that your old page has been moved for good, so they should use the new page’s address instead.
With a 301-redirection, you pass SEO value from the old page to the new page. This way, no SEO value gets lost in the process of changing URLs.
How To Change URLs In WordPress Using Rank Math
Before starting the process of actually changing URLs, make sure you have your new page completely ready to go. This makes everything a lot smoother. To change URLs in WordPress, I use the Rank Math plugin.
Install Rank Math
Go to the WordPress dashboard and click on “Add Plugin.”
Type “Rank Math” in the search box.
Click “Install Now,” and then “Activate.” (Mine is already active)
Activate redirections
Go to the Rank Math dashboard.
Scroll down to “Redirections” and activate it by clicking the box in the bottom right corner.
Add old & new URL
Go to “Redirections.”
Click on “Add New.”
Type the old URL address in the “Source URLs” box.
In the “Destination URL,” type the new URL address.
Make sure the “Redirection Type” is set on “301 Permanent Move.“
Click on “Add Redirection.”
Check Internal Links After Changing Your URL
Changing your URL is one thing, but making sure every link still leads to the right place is another. Most of the time, this should be okay as the Rank Math plugin does this automatically, but it’s important to check. If it doesn’t lead to the right place, visitors or search engines hit a dead end. This hurts your rankings.
So, check your internal links. These are the links between pages on your own website. Update all the links still pointing to your old URL. There are WordPress plugins that can help you discover and fix these dead links quickly.
