Is it worth handling SEO friendly URLs that might change over time? Or should I use generic ones that will not change?

Question

I will use SEO friendly URL slugs for my website pages.

But I would like to know how far should I go down this road.

My specific question is about whether I should be choosing SEO friendly URL's that might change over time.

EXAMPLE:

From: /blog/top-3-tablets-for-2019

This might need to change to (infact this example would change at least 1 time per year, because of the year change, but the number of products could also change):

To: /blog/top-5-tablets-for-2020

QUESTION

Is it worth the trouble? Because everytime that slug changes, I will need to manually set up a 301 redirect from the OLD to the NEW one. This is so I don't lose page ranking from Google. Otherwise Googlebot will see a 404 from the OLD one and will treat the new URL as a brand new page.

What I could be doing:

/blog/best-tablets // <---- THIS WILL NOT CHANGE

And I'd still be able to update the page title:

From: Top 3 tablets for 2019 To: Top 5 tablets for 2020

So, should I take the trouble of updating the slug (at least once every year), or should I come up with generic slugs that should not change over time. Is there an SEO benefit on taking the more complicated route?

Answer 1

You are correct - these "generic" slugs you mentioned are called "evergreen" URLs and you should use them - in your case, something like:

/blog/top-tablets

Adding the year to the URL can make it a bit clearer to the visitor but I would say that is redundant in most cases (and not necessary for SEO).