(Entry was posted by Dawne Eisenberg on this post in the Dumb SEO Questions community on Facebook, 11/21/2019).

301 redirects - What are the risks?

301 redirects: I have a site with messy/ overly long URLs and am considering cleaning them up. What are the risks? I know traffic will likely drop at first but how long until we rebound?

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YOUR ANSWERS

Selected answers from the Dumb SEO Questions Facebook & G+ community.

Richard Hearne: It depends... But first, what problem are you fixing?
Dawne Eisenberg: Richard Hearne long URLs with unnecessary extensions
Richard Hearne: Do these URLs cause SEO problems? How big is your site?
Dave Elliott: As Richard is saying don`t do it unless you have a good reason! No one will type in a page URL so who cares(unless Google news is a consideration or they are so long they aren`t indexable or something)

Change them going forward but why do it for old ones unless you have to?