Case: How to use changing URLs on sales pages for SEO purposes?

URLs play an important role in search engine optimization as they are one of the search engine ranking factors. In this case, we’ll look at how changing URLs on sales pages can affect a site’s SEO position.

Initial data: The site contains 1,700 pages, of which 1,300 are product pages. The niche area is the sale of fabrics, a highly competitive industry with many strong competitors and marketplaces. The site's ICS is 220, and the analyzed period is 18 weeks during the sales season. For the experiment, 100 pages of catalog sections were selected.

What was done:

• The original directory URLs were: /belyy, /seryy, /rozovyy, and so on. These addresses were uninformative for both users and search engines.
• New URLs were generated that included the main characteristic, general semantics and commercial semantics. For example: /belye-tkani-optom, /serye-tkani-optom, /rozovye-tkani-optom.
• We set up redirects from previous addresses to new ones.
• Re-indexed updated URLs in search engines (Yandex and Google).
• Removed old URLs.

Results after 9 weeks:

After implementing the changes, the site went through a short period of drawdown, since not all requests were covered by the new pages. However, after 9 weeks the following results were obtained:

We divided the pages into 3 categories depending on the change in the number of user visits compared to before the experiment. The statistics were compiled in a table, which is presented as a percentage of the total number of visits.

Conclusions:

• Yandex reacts faster to changes in URLs, and in some cases can both increase and decrease the positions of pages.
• Google is less active in changing rankings, favoring pages with already formed URLs, and is not always willing to spend resources on reworking pages with changed addresses.
• The maximum increase in traffic was recorded on those pages whose URL changed from one word to three or four.

Thus, changing the URLs on sales pages can have a significant SEO effect, especially if done with search engine considerations in mind.

If you have questions about SEO or want to discuss such changes on your website, write to the SEO studio "SEO COMPUTER" at info@seo.computer.

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