One of the things I'm planning to do as a result of the negative effects of Panda, is try to improve some of the titles of articles in my site. I'm not planning to change the URL (permalink in the WordPress Edit Post area).
As far as search engines are concerned, is it okay to leave the URLs as is when changing a title?
Thank you.
lorax
8:45 pm on May 26, 2011 (gmt 0)
We do it all the time here but I suppose it really depends upon how well SEO'd the site is and how competitive the keywords are.
shallow
10:43 pm on May 26, 2011 (gmt 0)
Thanks, lorax.
I'm not sure how much title changes will improve things; I just don't want to do anything that will make them worse.
lorax
5:48 pm on May 27, 2011 (gmt 0)
Well then why not just take a few of the lowest performers and try messing with those. See if things improve. If so, try a few more, etc...
rogerd
6:28 pm on Jun 2, 2011 (gmt 0)
I would think the gain from switching to a new URL would be offset by loss of link juice from 301-ing the old URL. Of course, if the post has no links and few bookmarks, you could switch it with no problem.
In most situations, I'd keep the old URL even if I changed the title. That's just me, though.
shallow
10:31 pm on Jun 2, 2011 (gmt 0)
Thanks for the comments. That's what I plan to do: keep the old URL and change the title.
lexipixel
3:45 am on Jun 5, 2011 (gmt 0)
In most situations, I'd keep the old URL even if I changed the title. That's just me, though.
Agreed, unless you really hate your URL's and want to (and can) change them in bulk via .htaccess, it's best to leave the permalinks as they were when the articles were first published.
gldmeier
1:42 pm on Jul 5, 2011 (gmt 0)
I always find when I want to change a title that the change would also benefit the url so i change that a well (unless I have a lot of external backlinks to a specific page that would get messed up)
