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When to Change a Blog Post URL: 7 Common Scenarios

ByNina Clapperton Updated on

A blog post URL is like an address for every individual post on your website. Changing the address is kind of like moving house: you need to make sure you do it correctly.

If you don’t, you’ll end up with all your UberEats orders going to the wrong address, and then you’ll be sad and hangry while someone else eats your pad thai.

When I first did a content audits of over 180 posts, I had to change over 30 URLs.

The decision to change URLs shouldn’t be made lightly. You need to be sure it’s the best course of action for the post to rank better, otherwise you can really mess up your website.

I had to make that call on a my hundred-odd posts, so I created this quick list of questions to ask myself to decide if I should change the URLs. These are still the questions I ask – and the ones I ask my students when they’re wondering if they should change their post’s URLs.

change blog post url

1. Do the top 10 SERPs have the keyword in the URL and you don’t?

Verdict: If yes, change the URL.

A URL is an address with the slug (that bit with the keyword in it) acting like the street name. If everyone else at the top 10 block party live on the same street, and you don’t, you won’t be invited to the party.

You may get lucky and get invited as a plus one, but you aren’t likely to get a permanent spot.

It’s very common for new bloggers to make this mistake and have a ton of URLs that are all over the place. You may not have known to include a keyword, or maybe you went after the wrong type of keyword.

In most cases, it’s best to have a URL that reflects the post’s primary keyword.

2. Do you have a date in your URL that makes it look outdated?

Verdict: If yes, change the URL.

Many websites default to including the date in a URL like this: https://sheknowsseo.co/2019/11/01/keyword-here/

The date is based on the published date of the blog post when it was first published.

But you should be updating your posts at least every 18 months (ideally every year).

Your URL can’t reflect that without becoming a new URL to show the current published date. So your post continues to look really out of date.

It’s like renovating the inside of your house to be all nice and modern, but the outside is still old and dilapidated.

We’ve all been told as kids not to judge a book by it’s cover, but robots don’t really have that rule. They will see the old date in the URL and assume it’s an out of date post. Some users might even do the same.

Removing dates means we can keep our posts updated and easily show it’s updated.

I recommend a URL structure like this: https://sheknowsseo.co/keyword-here/

3. Do you have a category in your URL that makes it look outdated or duplicates the URL?

Verdict: If yes, change the URL.

Another common URL issue is having a category inside the URL.

It looks like this: https://sheknowsseo.co/seo/keyword-here

That seems fine at a glance. I mean, it shows it’s an SEO blog post, right?

Wrong!

This causes major issues. Most of us have blog posts that will cross categories and end up in multiple categories or even into a subcategory over time.

This structure means that you can’t adjust your categories ever or subsect your site to be more specific for your users.

If you change the category, or put it in two categories, you’ll have a whole new address. It’s kind of like having a Main Street versus a Main Avenue. They may look identical, but they’re different addresses.

For example, https://sheknowsseo.co/seo/travel-blog-seo and https://sheknowsseo.co/travel-blog/travel-blog-seo.

The URL could go in both categories, and suddenly I’d have two URLs. Now, WordPress will ask you to select a “primary” category. This will be the one that goes in the URL. But if you switched this, you’d have a new URL to deal with.

It’s a headache to have to consider these set ups, and a real pain in the ass to undo. It’s best to avoid them from the get go.

Unfortunately, once you want to make the change, you have to go back and change all of your URLs. The address structure gets built into all of the posts, so you can’t have 50% with and 50% without.

It’s an annoying hour or so of work to redirect the URLs, and it can cause some ranking shifts temporarily. But it’ll benefit your site in the long run.

4. Is your URL as long as War and Peace?

Verdict: If yes, consider changing it unless #5 and #6 are “yes”.

Long URLs are annoying for users to type in – not that most people do that anymore. Google likes a short and to the point URL, just like they do with blog posts.

On socials, long URLs can use up half of your character count.

And it doesn’t look very professional to share a link that looks like this: https://sheknowsseo.co/this-is-the-worlds-longest-link-and-it-looks-like-hot-garbage-and-someone-probably-won’t-want-to-click-it-because-they-can-read-the-whole-blog-post-in-the-url-itself-rather-than-reading-the-blog-post

Meanwhile, this link would be much more clickable: https://sheknowsseo.co/long-link

It’s clear what the focus of the piece is, and it looks like a legitimate link.

There’s a reason people use link cloakers like Pretty Link to hide their insanely long affiliate links, and it’s largely the same reason as this: long ass links are ugly.

I have seen long URLs rank in Google, but on average they tend to be shorter.

Rank Math advises under 75 characters for your entire URL, including your domain. That’s actually longer than the average URL length I tend to see ranking in the top 10. I tend to see closer to 60-65 characters (anecdotally. I haven’t run a complete case study).

BUT I wouldn’t change a URL if it’s long but is a “yes” to the next two questions.

5. Do you have high quality backlinks to the post that you can’t get changed?

Verdict: If yes, don’t change the URL.

You don’t want to lose any strong backlinks you have to your website.

If you can change a backlink, then you can change the URL. I track every guest post and collab post I do in this spreadsheet.

If I need to change a URL, I search the spreadsheet to see where it has links from, and I contact the site owner to ask about changing it.

Typically, guest posts, collab posts, and link swaps are open to changing the URL. They’ve already gotten the content from you, and they don’t want a broken link.

But some links can’t be changed.

Any backlinks you’ve built from interviews, especially in large publications like the BBC, are unlikely to get changed. It’s hard to ever get in touch with an editor, let alone to have something changed on the website.

I find HARO links especially hard to get changed – luckily, most go to your homepage so it’s not a major issue.

If I had a backlink on She Knows SEO from Forbes, I would do everything in my power to keep that link. So I wouldn’t change the URL.

Even with a redirect, it may show up as a broken link when their SEO team does a broken link audit. They might not take the time to check that it’s a redirect and not a real broken link.

That being said, you can redirect it. But you’re taking a risk.

If I have any of these super high quality backlinks to a blog post, I won’t change the URL unless it’s a last resort and I know that post can’t rank with the current URL.

6. Does the post rank #1?

Verdict: If yes, don’t change the URL.

If your blog post is already winning, don’t change it!

You don’t change up a strategy until it stops working.

If my blog post is in the top 3 (not just #1), I won’t change the URL.

Now, that is only true if it’s ranking for a relevant keyword. Every blog post will rank #1 for some random, tangential keyword that gets like 5 impressions in 6 months.

I’m talking about the primary keyword.

Leave blog posts that are performing well alone. Don’t get greedy trying to go for every keyword variation, or trying to “clean” things up.

If it’s ranking while messy, leave it messy.

7. Can you take a traffic dip right now?

Verdict: If yes, change it. If no, leave it.

This is probably the most important question to ask yourself.

A URL change is a major change. It’s like getting a Face Off surgery and coming back with a whole new face.

Google won’t recognize the new face for a minute. You’ll have to show it that it’s still you by redirecting the old URL to the new one. But that can take a bit to connect.

I haven’t had terrible traffic dips from changing blog post URLs, but there is a risk.

If you’re a week away from Mediavine or Raptive, don’t take the risk.

If you’re about to sell your blog and want to keep traffic/income up for a higher valuation, don’t take the risk.

If you’re about to show your traffic to your dad to prove this whole blogging thing is legit, don’t take the risk.

Don’t rock the boat before you get to port!

Conclusion

Ultimately, you have to make the final call on whether or not to change a blog post URL.

I’ve changed some URLs that I probably could have kept as-is. And I’ve left others that could probably take the risk of getting cleaned up.

It is a case-by-case basis. There isn’t a quick “every URL with the number 1 in it should be redirected” answer that anyone can give you.

You need to analyze the URLs individually based on the keywords.

I recommend pairing this analysis with a blog content audit. You can analyze the content of the post while you analyze the URL.

Be careful with this process. You need to change URLs properly or you’ll lose significant traffic.

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Nina Clapperton is the founder of She Knows SEO.

She started blogging in 2018 and spent years doing everything “right” while earning $0. Then she stopped guessing and learned how search actually works. She rebuilt her travel site around audience intent and structure and grew to 50,000 sessions in 6 months. Within a year, the blog was bringing in $30,000 months and later crossed 243,000 pageviews.

She took the same audience first SEO approach and built her education business into multiple $100,000 months.

Now Nina teaches bloggers and online business owners how to build search powered businesses grounded in strong positioning, clear structure, and monetisation that actually supports their audience. She covers traditional SEO and AI driven search without the tech bro noise, and she’s known for explaining complex strategy with analogies you won’t forget.

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