How much of a hit to changing urls?

[NicB1]

Hi,

We have a few pages that from an SEO perspective have poor URLs.  We are planning on changing them (and 301 redirecting) the old page to the new page.  I heard in the past, this can temporarily negatively impact your SERP rank etc.  Since the old URLs are bad, even if there is a temporary negative hit, changing them in the long run it is better, but curious if anyone has any experience on what to expect.

[SarahGoliger]

Hi,

There can be a brief negative time where Google is re-indexing the URLs and moving the value to your new pages - It usually seems to be two weeks or less before you get a complete recovery.

Depending on how poor the URLs in question are it is probably worth it to change them - If you're using, say, Wordpress query valuables like ?q=234 for URLs right now, you should absolutely change them. If they're just a little wrong and pretty close to what you want for your keyword strategy, it may not be worth it and you just want to align the page title and other factors better instead.

[SimonCullum]

Spot-on answer from Brian.

So long as everything is done properly (such as correct URL mapping, 301s rather than 302s...) in a timely fashion, then you may even experience a zero drop in rankings and visitors.

With regards to inbound links to your current/old URLs; for any valuable links, try to get those changed so that they point directly to your new URLs, so that none of that link juice is lost through the redirects.

Regards, Simon