Use existing page with bad URL or brand new URL?

[XLMarketing]

Hello,

We will be updating an existing page with more helpful information with the goal of reaching more potential customers through SEO and also attaching a SEM campaign to the specific landing page.

The current URL of the page scores 25 on Page Authority, and has 2 links to it from blog articles (PA 35, 31).

The current content needs to be rewritten to be more helpful and also needs some additional information. The downsides are that it has an "bad" URL- no target keyword and uses underscores.

Which of the following choices would you make?

1. Update this old "bad" URL with new content. Benefit from the existing PA.

-or-

2. Start with a new optimized URL, reusing some of the old content and utilizing a 301 redirect from the previous page?

Thank you!

[GastonRiera]

Hi XLMarketing,

I'd go with the option 2.
Keep into consideration that Google said redirects 3xx does not loose any PR, linkjuice or whatever ranking power. Also there are some experiments performed by great people that stated there is a 10-15% loss in the redirect.
Why am I saying this? Just for you to know it in other situations.

More info: 
Google: Any 3xx Redirect Does Not Lose PageRank At All - SearchEngine Round Table
301 Redirects Rules Change: What You Need to Know for SEO - MozBlog

Hope it helps.
Best luck.
GR.

[NickW816]

I would go with option 2, just update the URL, and then add a 301 redirect from old URL to new URL, so it doesn't cause any broken links. We have done this on our website and seen great results with updating it to include a target keyword.

For example, we had a URL- https://seo-kansas-city.com/services/google-adwords-campaigns/, and then around December of this past year we decided to update it to https://seo-kansas-city.com/services/ppc/, in order to help rank for "ppc kansas city". We added a 301 redirect of course, to avoid any broken links or loss of page authority.

Our results from making this change (and added a little more content to the page) led us to move from position 16-19 on page 2 of Google, to now ranking in position 3-5 on page 1 of Google.

[XLMarketing]

Thank you Gaston!

[XLMarketing]

Thank you Nicholas!