Need to change permalink structure - need advice on these two options
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I have a client with a robust Wordpress blog that ranks well for a number of high-volume terms. We are doing a site rebuild, and they are adamant they don't want to lose any SERP ranking.
However, their permalink structure contains the date the post was published, i.e. https://www.company.com/blog/2018/10/28/blog-post-title
The date inclusion is not ideal for obvious reasons, but also because it's creating 404 links when pre-scheduling with Hubspot.
Option 1: Change the permalink structure for all posts, past and future, and implement 301 redirects
The only reason I'm not outright doing this is because there will be some slippage in the rankings, given that redirects only pass on a percentage of juice. The client doesn't want any slippage.
Option 2: Create a new instance of Wordpress in a new subdirectory and continue the blog from there
This will mandate a new structure for the blog posts; now posts will be children of /industry-blog/ instead of /blog/, but the old posts will remain as they are under /blog/ (and with dates intact). But I don't know if this will cause some hierarchical confusion that will negatively impact both the old blog and the new blog.
Any advice given is appreciated. Please feel free to correct me if I've gotten anything wrong, I've only been practicing SEO for a few years now.
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For me Option 1 with 301 redirect from the old structure makes sense. After all the pages re-indexed I would imagine they should keep their rankings ok. Like you said having custom urls does have additional benefits.
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Honestly, if the client is already on you about not losing SERPS, I'd just leave the structure as it is. Preserve it and move it over to the new site. It's not as clean as you would like it, but it does contain the blog title in it and that should contain relevant keywords/subject matter.
Can you expand on the 404 issue with Hubspot scheduling? Have you talked to them about this issue? They're pretty adaptive and I'm surprise their scheduling structure would produce 404's ahead of the post being published.
I hope that helps!
