Can I Request a URL Change?

1. 96

   eugbugposted 4 years ago

   Half way through writing an article, I decided to split it into two as it grew bigger. The original article's title referred to the two aspects of the topic (and the URL reflected this). I took out one of the words from the title and used it in the second article. I just need a bit chopped off the end of the URL. I'm worried that because of the site diversity policy implemented by Google in the last few weeks, both articles won't rank because of their similarity. The articles are recently written (moved to niche sites within the last month)

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2. 96

   Glenn Stokposted 4 years ago

   You can't change the URL after you publish an article. The staff can't change it either since it would break any possible incoming links.
   
   I always make my URL more generic than the title just to compensate for possible future title changes. You can only do this BEFORE you publish by clicking "edit" next to the URL field. Once you get past that step, it's too late to change it.

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   1. 96

      eugbugposted 4 years agoin reply to this

      Even if it's only recently published? I could re-publish and change the URL.

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      1. 96

         Glenn Stokposted 4 years agoin reply to this

         As I said, you can’t change the URL after you publish. That means even if you published recently.
         
         Deleting and republishing is the only way, but I advice against that unless you do it before Google indexes it. Otherwise you’ll get slapped for duplicate content, or someone else might have already plagiarized it and you lose your rights if you delete it.
         
         It's always best to think about it when you initially start the hub, while you’re still on the page where you enter the title and URL. Keep the important keywords in the URL, but other than that, keep it shorter than the title and more general, so it works well with any title change you might make in the future.

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3. 96

   RonElFranposted 4 years ago

   I don't think it's necessary that the url and title match exactly. In fact, I've always looked at having a url that has additional or different keywords from the title as an SEO advantage. Here's what moz.com says:
   
   "Keyword use in a URL can also act as a ranking factor... using a URL that includes keywords can improve your site's search visibility."
   
   So, unless the url now misrepresents the updated content, I wouldn't change it.

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   1. 96

      eugbugposted 4 years agoin reply to this

      In a sense it does because it refers to content that was shifted to the new article when I split the original. So what I'm concerned about is that the new article won't rank because of the site diversity thing and since it contains content referred to by the first article's URL.

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