Changing a URL with a lot of organic traffic due to a migration

Question

My team and I are working on a website migration (from Magento to Magento 2). We have taken this opportunity to renew the website architecture since currently it's not SEO friendly at all. My question is about a blog post that drives 40% of the total organic traffic. The URL looks like https://example.com/new51. For the migration, I'd like to move it into the blog directory and change the URL to a more descriptive one, with keywords in it. But the client wants us to keep it the way it is right now so organic traffic doesn't drop. From my point of view, we have different options, keeping in mind that we have a lot of pressure coming from the client:

1. Completely changing the URL and moving it to the blog directory with the rest of the blogposts. I expect the traffic to drop because of the migration but to progressively increase after a few days/weeks, but I'm afraid that the URL and directory changes are too big and that it will make rankings for this landing page keywords drop.
2. An SEO colleague told me she once had the same problem, and her solution was: she had the content with a non-friendly URL (A) that she duplicated (URL B) changing the URL to a most SEO friendly one. She picked URL B as the canonical version for both. After some time, URL B started gaining more traffic than A and then she did a redirect 301 from A to B.
3. Keeping the URL as it is, but I'm afraid that after the migration, traffic will drop because the whole site architecture will have changed except for this one blogpost.

Which one do you think is the best option not to lose traffic in a mid/long term? Or maybe you have a better option?

Answer 1

Just 301

First of all, I would not do anything like #2 on your list lol. It's not that scientific.

Name the new URL whatever you like. If you 301 redirect the old URL to the new one, it will carry over all of the "SEO" that the old URL had.

You could also leave the URL the way it is. No difference. Google ranks pages not websites.

Where the old page was in the existing architecture doesn't matter. Google only cares that the user ends up where they want to be. The content drives the page's ranking, not some arbitrary string. I also don't believe that there's such thing as an "SEO Friendly URL"...anymore at least.

I mean there used to be that sort of thing when Google relied on keywords so heavily. Nowadays, keywords in the URL are like at the very bottom of the totem pole in terms of determining how a page will rank.

The 301 http status code implies a permanent redirect. So whatever you're going to change it to, try to keep it that way from here on out.

Best of luck with your migration, and remember to set expectations properly with your client. After probably ~200+ migrations, I still always assume something will go wrong :)