Historical URLs Can Impact SEO – Here’s Why

Websites come and websites go as companies, brands, and online publishers change their messaging and core offerings. The Wayback Machine is a tool that stores historical URLs that are no longer redirected or searchable by most search engines. From an SEO perspective, this means that older versions or subpages of a website that are no longer live or directed to can be accessed and utilized. If your site has been around for several years, chances are, your team has changed hands, and personnel from years past may not have used SEO best practices in migrating site content. Creating historical redirects is just one way the Wayback machine can enable you to make the most out of old or retired web pages. 

The Wayback Machine is also a helpful archive of page content, which is essential in achieving consistent brand messaging and is a valuable resource to check your work to study how content changes impact your site traffic over time. You can also search competitors’ pages to learn how frequently they update their site content. This becomes a critical exercise if your status on the search engine landing page depends upon your use of fresh, new content to stay a step ahead of your competitors. 

If your brand is looking to make the most of historical web data to enhance your SEO, get in touch with the team at ASTRALCOM. We work with businesses across sectors to build and deliver functional, ROI-boosting SEO strategies.