Why You Shouldn’t Date Your URL Slugs

Content marketers often invest in creating seasonal content like industry reports and guides. But, embedding dates in URL slugs (like /2025-strategy-guide) suggests obsolescence and silently creates long-term SEO debt.

Here’s why, and how to fix it.

1. You lose hard-earned link equity

Say you replace /2025-strategy-guide with /2026-strategy-guide. Unless every backlink is updated and internal link is perfectly redirected, all the shares and SEO value tied to the old slug just… vanish.

2. Redirect chains cripple performance

Imagine calling a customer service line and explaining your issue, only to be told: “Hold on, let me transfer you to someone else.“

Then it happens again. And again.

That’s what redirect chains do. Every extra “hop” adds latency and decreases page loading speed.

3. Internal linking gets messy

Every new dated slug forces manual link updates across your pages, articles, and resources. And as your content library grows, that effort doesn’t scale.

4. Dated slugs look… outdated

A slug like /2022-trends in 2025 signals obsolescence before users read a single word, even if your content is current.

The solution: Evergreen URLs

Choose slugs based on the permanent theme of your topic, not the calendar.

Content Title	❌ Fragile URL	✅ Evergreen URL
5 Emerging Tech Trends to Watch in 2025	/5-tech-trends-2025	/emerging-tech-trends
Q1 2025 Industry Benchmarks Report	/2025/03/18/industry-benchmarks	/industry-benchmarks-report
TMC’s State of Content Marketing Report (2025)	/state-of-content-marketing-report-2025	/state-of-content-marketing-report

Why evergreen URL slugs work

• Compound SEO growth: All link equity accumulates at a single URL.
• Zero redirect debt: You can refresh content without creating a new page. No broken bookmarks.
• Effortless maintenance: Internal links remain valid over time.
• Trust-centric: Users judge freshness from visible dates, not URLs.

Live Example: Salesforce

Salesforce’s State of Marketing report is on its 9th edition.

But the URL slug is simply /state-of-marketing/ not /9th-edition-state-of-marketing.

Only the page title and H1 changed. Those can be updated at any time, even on the 100th revision, without affecting the URL structure.

Evergreen URL slugs compound all link-building efforts toward a single resource, strengthening domain authority year after year.

How To Migrate Existing Dated URLs

Step 1: Audit your current URL slug structure

• Identify all dated URLs with significant traffic (using Google Analytics or Google Search Console).
• Review and export backlink profiles (using Ahrefs or Semrush)
• Find all internal links pointing to those URLs (using Screaming Frog or Sitebulb)

Step 2: Design evergreen replacements

• Replace dates with topic-based keywords (e.g., /marketing-report instead of /2023-report)
• Use your existing URL hierarchy (e.g., /resources/marketing-report) or define a clear new structure
• Keep slugs clean and readable. Avoid special characters like apostrophes or ampersands. Use /company-report instead of /company's-report, and /content-marketing-report instead of /content-&-marketing-report
  • TIP: For conciseness, leave out company names from your URL slugs if the name is in the website already
• Make sure each new slug is unique and doesn’t overlap with already existing URLs

Step 3: Implement 301 Redirects

• Create one-to-one redirects from each old URL to its new evergreen version
• Avoid chaining redirects. Make sure each redirect points directly to the final version
• Test all redirects using a redirect checker tool
• Monitor crawl stats for errors

Step 4: Update internal references

• Replace all internal links site-wide
• Regenerate your sitemap and submit it to search engines
• Update canonical tags on all affected pages
• Adjust any structured data that references the old URLs
• Brief your content and SEO teams to stop using date-based URLs going forward

Clean URL architecture is a quiet strategy

Unless you’re a news publisher, dates in URLs are more liability than clarity.

Decouple content freshness from URL structure. This turns each report, guide, or content piece into a long-term asset, not an annual rebuild.

Thinking about a content refresh? Reach out to clean up your link structure and future-proof your content.