Google's John Mueller has spoken out clearly against changing URLs for SEO reasons alone. He essentially said that changing URLs in most cases has a negative impact on search engine optimization and that you probably shouldn't change URLs for SEO reasons alone.
This came up on two different sites, one on Reddit and the other on Twitter over the course of the same 24 hours.
John wrote on Reddit, "If you are an SEO and charge by the hour for this change, it will help your bottom line. Will it help the website? Very, very rarely (if they have terrible URLs that you can't even copy and paste, maybe). Will a change negatively impact the site for a while until it's reworked? Probably. Some risk + usually no gain = .... ?"
That's strong language against changing URLs for SEO reasons....
Then John wrote on Twitter, "When changing URLs, make redirects per page. There is no maximum number of redirects per site. Also, you're probably shooting yourself in the foot for a while with no visible benefit. Change URLs for real reasons, not for tangible reasons that are "good for SEO".
Perhaps even a strong language against changing URLs.
I've never been a fan of changing URLs for SEO reasons either. In fact, my old stories on this site still have the original URL structure because I didn't want those URLs changed for SEO reasons. I would often do anything to avoid URLs being changed for SEO and other reasons, even if it meant more work for my developers.
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