I would like to know if changing the permalink effects PA of the page?

[MoeezLodhi]

Like lets say abc.com/abc-xyz.. I change that to abc.com/xyz-abc-hij

An established page, having some links to the page(inbound and outbound both). If I change the permalink of that page, will that effect the PA of the page? All the links to the older permalink will be useless or they will link with the new permalink?

[TomRayner]

Hi there

Yes, not only will it affect the pagerank, it will also affect the actual SEO strength/juice/equity going to the page.

For example, I'll just use a random webpage from Reuters: http://www.reuters.com/places/italy - you can see there is a PA of 84.  If I add a random query string to the URL: http://www.reuters.com/places/italy?randomquery - it has a PA of 1.

So that's just adding a query string.  If you change the actual permalink structure itself, you will definitely reset the PA and strength of the page.  To ensure that the strength of the old URL is passed on, you should implement a 301 redirect to your new permalink.

Hope this helps

[MoeezLodhi]

Hi Tom,
Thank you so much for your reply. Yes, I figured that out. I just checked the PR and it was 1. and I realized it will be because I changed the permalink like you said. So I now have  implemented a 301 redirect. Now the question is how much time will it take to have the PA back?

Thank you again!
Moeez

[TomRayner]

Hi Moeez

In Google's eyes it will happen within a few days of the new URL and old URL being recrawled.  The DA will update in either the next scheduled database refresh (December 17th) or if not, the one after that.

[MoeezLodhi]

Ok Thank you so much for your help!