SEO Tomfoolery
-
Oh Hai,
I recently changed the permalink structure on my Wordpress based site, southwestbreaks.co.uk from the standard ?p=123 to a more SEO chummy /%postname%/. As a result, my site has completely dropped off the board for all my previously well ranked search phrases.
Having since gotten into SEOmoz a bit more, I can see there are WP plugins available that apparently would've done this a lot more smoothly.
I'd be most grateful if someone could explain if this drop off is just temporary, or have I somehow entered Google's shun book? The site has been like this for about 48 hours.
Thanks,
Tim
-
Thanks for the quick responses.
Currently, visiting a page on my site using the old permalink structure redirects one to the same page on the new setup, so I'm guessing there is a redirect in place, all be it a 302? (all I did was change the structure in the permalinks tab on WP, nothing else).
Should I still do what you suggest with the htaccess file?
-
Hi Tim,
hmmm..that is a quick response from Google!
I suspect your problem is that you have unintentionally broken all of the indexed links in the google search results- Ouch! ...and any external links to posts from other sites - Ouch again!!
Basically, Google has the URL of your pages indexed, but you have changed all of the URL's without creating a 301 (permanent) redirect. So, when a user clicks that link in the Search Results page it returns a 404 Not found error.
Ah..I see that Dan has explained what you need to do to fix the problem.
Sha
-
Hi
Did you 301 Redirect the old pages to the matching new pages? Anytime you change URLs you have to do this, it redirects your link juice as well as anyone trying to access an old page with a link or bookmark - they'll arrive at the new page instead of getting a 404 (page not found).
You do 301 redirects in your .htaccess file (insert them after the wordpress info) in this format;
Redirect 301 /oldpage/ http://www.mydomain.com/newpage/
One line for every page you're redirecting. If you are using the new Yoast WP SEO plugin, you can edit your .htaccess file directly from WordPress, otherwise you have to edit it via FTP
BONUS: An easy way to get your old and new URLs so you do not have to type them all out, is run something like Screaming Frog SEO Spider or Xenu Link Sleuth on your site, and export the URLs into excel.
-Dan
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Multiregional SEO - different website designs
Hello, when it comes to location & language targeting, is it possible to have different website page designs for their respective regions? So let's say we have one design for www.example.com/product-1 and a completely different design for www.example.com/us/product-1? Our branding is different for the US so would ideally like to use specific US designs for US pages. Thanks,
Technical SEO | | SEOCT0 -
Plugins and SEO
I'd like some expert guidance. I've searched for a theme that does what I want and finally found something I like, but I'm wondering what you all think I should do to increase it's searchability. The plugin has all the listings and styling. All I need to do is past the code into the wordpress site ad voila! I have a page. Using the widget lets me allow upvotes and provide map etc. But it means the content is inside the widget instead of on the page. What would you modify if you wanted to keep the theme & widget to get the best results. http://best-of-sacramento.com/dentists This is my staging site.
Technical SEO | | julie-getonthemap1 -
Javascript redirects harmful for SEO?
Hi Mozzers, A website deals with some javascript redirects. After some research, It came clear a normal 301 is the best option, but javascript redirects can be useful if you don't have access to a website' server. Does anyone have experience with javascript redirects? Can they be harmful in any point of SEO? I would love to hear your thoughts!
Technical SEO | | WeAreDigital_BE0 -
What to do about this subdomain for SEO?
This is a bit of an unusual structure and I'm having difficulty explaining the question so pardon my being a 'noob', haha. The website I'm working on has some content under Forums that is hosted on another domain. The main website is https://yournorthside.org.au/ and if you select under the main Nav > Forums > Lived Experience it will take you to https://yournorthside.saneforums.org/t5/Lived-Experience-Forum/ct-p/lived-experience-forum. So it's as if it's a subdomain. (notice even the appearance of the main menu changes, weird) Apparently, saneforums.org has a requirement for that content to be on that subdomain. So therefore it's not part of my sitemap and now crawled or indexed. My question is is this structure okay? What are the implications for SEO? Should I be looking to implement some type of no follow link or something? Or is it actually beneficial in terms of all their content gives us 'link juice'? Can you link me to any resources / articles that give further insight?
Technical SEO | | kelseyc0 -
Yoast SEO. After set up 404 error pages
Hello all, Something strange happened with my blog site. I recently signed to MOZ tools. Initially everything was fine, but during my last crawl I got loads of 404
Technical SEO | | A_Fotografy
pages. Few days ago I was tweaking some settings in SEO plugin according to this post https://moz.com/blog/setup-wordpress-for-seo-success What I noticed was that 404 pages were coming from my blog posts, but for
some reason category was missing in those posts. For example this link is 404
https://a-fotografy.co.uk/inchcolm-island-wedding-photography-bailie The one with category is https://a-fotografy.co.uk/wedding-pictures/inchcolm-island-wedding-photography-bailie/ So basically for some reason category was missing. Please let me know how can I fix this instead of doing hundreds of
redirects now. Thank you,
Regards,
Armands0 -
SEO for a a static content website
Hi everyone, We would like to ask suggestions on how to improve our SEO for our static content help website. With the release of each new version, our company releases a new "help" page, which is created by an authoring system. This is the latest page: http://kilgray.com/memoq/2015/help-en/ I have a couple of questions: 1- The page has an index with many links that open up new subpages with content for users. It is impossible to add title tags to this subpages, as everything is held together by the mother page. So it is really hard to for users to find these subpage information when they are doing a google search. 2- We have previous "help" pages which usually rank better in google search. They also have the same structure (1 page with big index and many subpages) and no metadata. We obviously want the last version to rank better, however, we are afraid exclude them from bots search because the new version is not easy to find. These are some of the previous pages: http://kilgray.com/memoq/2014R2/help-en/ http://kilgray.com/memoq/62/help-en/ I would really appreciate suggestions! Thanks
Technical SEO | | Kilgray0 -
Wordpress plugins for SEO
Hello I am new to wordpress I just have started using it. Can anyone suggest me some useful tools / plugins / setting for SEO? I am further intrested in sepeeding up Wp. Any good advive on wp an seo would be appriciated.
Technical SEO | | sesertin0 -
Need advanced SEO help!
Hi guys, This is my last attempt to work out what is up with this site before it goes to the big Flipper in the sky (and even then I doubt it will make much more than £1!) This site was a successful site, then one day Google decided it didnt like it, and I have not had much joy with it for nearly a year now. I must admit I tried to forget about it for a while, but it has always been a thorn in my side due to the fact it used to be a nice little earner. I have SEOmoz crawled it and I cant find any issues that would cause such a severe penalty, I removed many of the affiliate links, clocked the rest of the affiliate links and tried numurous other ideas, but now, as a last ditch attempt I am looking for some help! I tried to avoid the typical thin affiliate site by adding relevant content, but I have seen sites with much poorer design and content rank higher than this one. Any ideas welcome! Thanks in advance My site
Technical SEO | | mozUser14692366292850