One of the first lessons of SEO is “Don’t mess with the slug!”

Slugs are the unique strings of words at the end of the web address (after the backslash “/”).

Once a web URL is created, it begins to build a history and ranking credibility. The slug identifies the webpage for patients and serves as a lightweight ranking factor.

For the most part, you don’t want to mess with them.

Or worse, abandon them. Your patients (and Google) don’t appreciate broken links that lead to empty pages! This is a surefire way to turn away patients and lower your Google rankings.

But sometimes you need to update your URLs!

Why?

Maybe you need to permanently move a page to a different location.

Or maybe you want to clean up a confusing or wordy URL.

(For example, you might want to update a webpage like medicalspa.com/folder/injectables/botox to medicalspa.com/botox-dallas. It's clean and simple and hits your keywords).

So how can you update your URL without negative effects? ‍

301 redirects!

301 redirects allow you to permanently redirect an old URL to a new URL.

Essentially, any patient that types in the old URL will automatically be sent to the new page.

Your updated URL can bring more patients to your med spa while avoiding any broken links. Plus, your SEO rankings will seamlessly transfer to the new URL, giving you the most visibility and booking potential!

Don't have time to update them yourself? At Med Aesthetics Group we can help you handle everything from your website URLs to your marketing campaigns.