Our URLs have changed. Do we request our external links be updated as well?

[pano]

Hello Forum,

We've re-launched our website with a new, SEO-friendly URL structure. We have also set up 301 redirects from our old URLs to the new ones. Now, is there any benefit to asking those external websites that link to us to update their links with our new URLs? What is the SEO best practice?

Thanks for your insight.

[Banar]

Hi Pano, 
Congrats on your new website. If you did all 301s properly it's good enough, as it sends about 90% of the juice. Asking link partners to update the link may be very time consuming. I'd recommend to spend that time on new link building instead of contacting places that link to you. Also, some of them will probably never do it, some of them will but in days/weeks, so I do not recommend going this path.

[EGOL]

I believe that a small percentage of linkjuice is lost through a redirect and that anchor text is lost.  So, I would ask webmasters that have a relationship with me to edit the link.  I would not ask everyone, just the ones who I know and who would gladly do this very easy job.... they know that I would do it for them if they asked... and they know that I would offer to do it without being asked if I knew that they changed their brand to a new domain.

[AlanBleiweiss]

I'm in agreement with EGOL - where it makes sense from a time and resources perspective, requesting updates to links is the best practice recommendation.  While Banar has a valid point if there are thousands, tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of links, those that come from very highly authoritative sites that you can get changed can help send the proper signals to search engines sooner in regard to the need to provide search engines validation that the new URLS deserve the same trust the old URLs held.

This is an important, yet often overlooked factor.  Here's why:

Just because you change URLs, and while the content might appear to match the last version, the fact exists that previous links were generated to the old URL - those that provided those links presumably did so because they trusted the content and/or deemed it valuable.  Since it's possible that content changes  when URLs do, those same people might not want to link to the new page if that content changed.

It's why search engines do not solely rely on their own data or algorithms, and to gain maximum value after a 301, rely on new links being generated directly to the new URL.  Lack of that is a prime cause of the bleeding off of link value in a 301.  It's a minor loss, yet it's a loss nonetheless.

[dublinbet]

I agree with Alan! Focus on sending link change requests to the highly authoritative sites ( old domains with good link profiles)  that already link to you. Also it would be worth having some sort of social accelerator strategy in place in order to speed up the indexing process. Twitter is a good example!

Cheers

Ari