Focus on building trust as opposed to trying to bend and break the rules. That way, you rise above Google's often-changing rules which are getting better and better at finding people who are looking for shortcuts. If a URL is too long then it misses out on the benefit of having any keywords within it bolded, which will likely draw more attention to the user. Many people fixate on "on-page SEO" in their marketing efforts. They make sure their keywords are jammed in the copy and the internal links and silos are set up correctly. For a typical WordPress site this might take an hour or two to knock out the easy stuff. Whenever a high authority blog links to your website, Google considers it as a positive signal toward your blog. Your blog becomes more important and it gives your site a boost in search rankings. The more backlinks you have, the higher you rank on Google Search. Important elements of a website redesign oftentimes get pushed to the side when timeframes are constrained. One of the most important components of a new design project is to take time at the beginning to analyze current traffic to ensure current visitors are not lost.