Does Changing Page/Post URL and Location Negatively Affect Anything?

I've had a website on the back burner for a while. I made it over a year ago, and there has always been one page that no matter what I do to it's on-page seo, it wont rank in the top 200 for its targeted keyword (competition is low-med).

The only unique thing about this page is I had moved it (a 3,000 word article) from being an inner page on my website (after it was indexed), to setting it as the homepage. And ever since then it (now my homepage) will never seem to rank for its keyword in the top 200.

Before I started link building, I like to have everything at least ranking in the top 200, so I know it's off to a good start -- and everything else is except this.

Is there any reason to suggest that if you move a page or change its url, that google won't re-rank it properly until it's getting some popularity signals (links, traffic, etc)?

Might be a stupid question, but did you 301 redirect it properly then? You should have gotten your rankings back.

Are you using wordpress? When you change the alias for a WP post, it usually 301's to the new address.

Anyway, to answer your initial question: changing URLs is bad and will modify your SERPs, for good or for worse.

bartosimpsonio said:

Are you using wordpress? When you change the alias for a WP post, it usually 301's to the new address.

Anyway, to answer your initial question: changing URLs is bad and will modify your SERPs, for good or for worse.

Click to expand...

The thing is, this keyword/page has never cracked the top 200 for its targeted term, despite the never ending on-page tweaks I've made.

I set it from an inner page to the homepage, because it seemed appropriate, and two, because the keyword is so long that I thought I could further dilute its density by assigning it to the homepage (so there would be no page url for the keyword to also appear in).

I'm starting to wonder if it's just a term google simply does not want to give me a break on until it sees some traffic signals to that page (although it is odd considering it is a low-med comp term, and everything else is ranking nicely).

If you've added the proper redirection and indexed the all pages in Google then it will not have any negative impact. If you haven't taken any of the action then updating the page post URL will affect the ranking of your website.

The impact is on the website and web page ranking.

You should configure 301 redirect properly. Otherwise it is guaranteed loss in positions.