I’m curious how you all handle URLs with the year in them. I have a few blog posts currently ranking between positions 14-20, and their URLs end with ‘2024.’
I’m considering updating the content and either changing the URL to ‘2025’ or removing the year entirely, then redirecting the old URLs to the updated ones.
What are your best practices for this? How do you maintain or improve rankings without risking harm?
I did a recent audit with Sitebulb, and they recommended redirecting from the original URL. For example, if you first published in 2024, you should redirect to 2025 but in 2026, redirect from the 2024 URL to avoid multiple redirects. Having too many redirects can affect rankings.
@Ulysses
So would it be better to keep the URL without a year in it? That way, I wouldn’t need to update redirects in the future.
Also, does having the year in URLs provide any SEO advantage?
Casey said:
@Ulysses
So would it be better to keep the URL without a year in it? That way, I wouldn’t need to update redirects in the future.
Also, does having the year in URLs provide any SEO advantage?
Including the year can be helpful, but if you need to change the URL each year, you’ll have to set up redirects, which can impact rankings over time. Are you able to keep the original post and redirect while hiding the previous one instead of deleting it? I know Shopify allows that.
Casey said:
@Ulysses
So would it be better to keep the URL without a year in it? That way, I wouldn’t need to update redirects in the future.
Also, does having the year in URLs provide any SEO advantage?
I haven’t noticed a significant SEO impact from having the year in URLs. A better approach might be to include the year in the title and update it as the content is refreshed. Redirecting URLs frequently might lead to minor issues down the line.
@Dax
Thanks for the advice!
Keep the old URL and create a new one with internal linking. This approach worked well for me.
Kameron said:
Keep the old URL and create a new one with internal linking. This approach worked well for me.
Could you provide an example? Do you mean something like, ‘For the latest on XYZ in 2025, check out our updated article’ with a link?
Just remove the year from the URL. You don’t need ‘2024’ in the URL to rank for 2024-related queries. Then you can update content and titles each year without needing to handle redirects.
If you Google ‘best credit cards 2024,’ you’ll notice most top results don’t include the year in the URL.
Just keep the URL without the year.