Moz Q&A is closed.
After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.
URL rewriting from subcategory to category
-
Hello everybody!
I have quite simple question about URL rewriting from subcategory to category, yet I can't find any solution to this problem (due to lack of my deeper apache programming knowledge).
Here is my problem/question:
we have two website url structures that causes dublicate problems:
1 and 2 pages are absolutely same (both also returns 200 OK). What we need is 301 redirect from 2 to 1 without any other deeper categories redirects (like www.website.com/language/category/1/169/ redirecting to .../category/1/ or .../category/).
Here goes .htaccess URL rewrite rules:
RewriteRule ^([^/]{1,3})/([^/]+)/([^/]+)/([^/]+)/([^/]+)/([^/]+)/$ /index.php?lang=$1&idr=$2&par1=$3&par2=$4&par3=$5&par4=$6&%{QUERY_STRING} [L]
RewriteRule ^([^/]{1,3})/([^/]+)/([^/]+)/([^/]+)/([^/]+)/$ /index.php?lang=$1&idr=$2&par1=$3&par2=$4&par3=$5&%{QUERY_STRING} [L]
RewriteRule ^([^/]{1,3})/([^/]+)/([^/]+)/([^/]+)/$ /index.php?lang=$1&idr=$2&par1=$3&par2=$4&%{QUERY_STRING} [L]
RewriteRule ^([^/]{1,3})/([^/]+)/([^/]+)/$ /index.php?lang=$1&idr=$2&par1=$3&%{QUERY_STRING} [L]
RewriteRule ^([^/]{1,3})/([^/]+)/$ /index.php?lang=$1&idr=$2&%{QUERY_STRING} [L]
RewriteRule ^([^/]{1,3})/$ /index.php?lang=$1&%{QUERY_STRING} [L]
There are other redirects that handles non-www to www and related issues:
RedirectMatch 301 ^/lt/$ http://www.domain.lt/
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^domain.lt
RewriteRule (.*) http://www.domain.lt/$1 [R=301,L]
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !(.)/$RewriteRule ^(.)$ http://www.domain.lt/$1/ [R=301,L]
At this moment we cannot solve this problem with rel canonical (due to our CMS limits).
Thanks for your help guys!
If You need any other details on our coding, just let me know.
-
That's great!
Glad to help anytime. Sha -
Thank You very much! The code You provided worked very well and solved our problem.
-
Thanks Alan Mosley and Sha Menz! We will try to implement given advices tonight (at low traffic hours) and check back soon with results. Sha, thats ok with line breaks, we will figure it out. Thanks for your support once again!
-
Sorry that my answer appears to have lost all line breaks...seems to be some css issues at the moment.
Hoping you can copy it out and separate the lines ....I will try to reformat it as soon as I can, but right now it just keeps loading funky.
Sha
-
Hi kundrotas, The problem you have is that the code used for .htaccess functions is not terribly "intelligent". It does not allow for the use of "IF" statements etc. This being the case, the better option is to move the action to within the actual code. This is the rule at question RewriteRule ^([^/]{1,3})/([^/]+)/([^/]+)/$ /index.php?lang=$1&idr=$2&par1=$3&%{QUERY_STRING} [L] The easiest thing to do is in index.php add a check for par1 // If par1 is 1 and everything else is blank send it to the root. if( $par1 == '1' && $par2 == '' && $par3 == '' && $par4 == '' && $par5 == '' && $par6 == '' ) { $location = "/$lang/$idr/"; header ('HTTP/1.1 301 Moved Permanently'); header ('Location: '.$location); } Hope that helps, Sha
-
in windows on a IIS server it would be
<match url="^category/1$"><action type="Rewrite" url="category"></action></match>
i think in a htaccess file it would be sothing like
RewriteRule ="^/category/1$ http://www.domain.lt/category [R=301,L]
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
-
Appending a code at the end of a URL
Hi All, Some real estate/ news companies have a code appended to the end of a URL https://www.realestate.com.au/property-house-qld-ormiston-141747584 https://www.brisbanetimes.com.au/national/queensland/childcare-centre-could-face-prosecution-for-leaving-child-on-hot-bus-20230320-p5ctqs.html Can I ask if there's any negative SEO implications for doing this? Cheers Dave
Technical SEO | | Redooo0 -
Folders in url structure?
Hello, Revamping an out-of-date website and am wondering if I need to include the folders (categories) in the url structure? The proposed structure has 8 main folders. I've been reading that Google is ok if the folder is not included in the url, but is it really? The hesitation I have is that the urls are getting long and the main folder only has only a sub folder beneath it. So, /folder-name/facility-name/treatment-overview. This looks too long, doesn't it? Thanks!
Technical SEO | | lfrazer1230 -
Backlinks that go to a redirected URL
Hey guys, just wondering, my client has 3 websites, 2 of 3 will be closed down and the domains will be permanently redirected to the 1 primary domain - however they have some high quality backlinks pointing the domains that will be redirected. How does this effective SEO? Domain One (primary - getting redesign and rebuilt) - not many backlinks
Technical SEO | | thinkLukeSEO
Domain Two (will redirect to Domain One) - has quality backlinks
Domain Three (will redirect to Domain One) - has quality backlinks When the new website is launched on Domain One I will contact the backlink providers and request they update their URL - i assume that would be the best.0 -
Robots.txt Syntax for Dynamic URLs
I want to Disallow certain dynamic pages in robots.txt and am unsure of the proper syntax. The pages I want to disallow all include the string ?Page= Which is the proper syntax?
Technical SEO | | btreloar
Disallow: ?Page=
Disallow: ?Page=*
Disallow: ?Page=
Or something else?0 -
WooCommerce category naming conventions
I am managing a woocommerce store selling prescription glasses/spectacles. We have a lot of categories with similar names and I want to adopt the best possible naming convention to get the best from search. So we have a number of similar categories for both Men's and women's glasses. Currently they are named as follows: Women's Glasses-Women's Rimless Glasses
Technical SEO | | SushiUK
-Women's Semi Rimless Glasses
-Women's Plastic Glasses
-Women's Metal Glasses
-Women's Retro Glasses Currently, this results in the following URL structure for sub categories: https://www.glassesonspec.co.uk/product-category/womens-glasses-2/womens-rimless-glasses/ (For some reason WooCommerce is adding -2 to the end of the primary category name, it will not let me change it for some reason, this is the subject of a further investigation!) So first question, is there too much duplication of the word glasses on the sub items? for example, should they read; Women's Glasses
-Rimless
-Semi Rimless
-Plastic
-Metal
-Retro Hence giving this URL structure: https://www.glassesonspec.co.uk/product-category/womens-glasses-2/rimless/ OR, should we change the top level category name to just Women's and let the sub categories complete the picture?: Women's
-Rimless Glasses
-Semi Rimless Glasses
-Plastic Glasses
-Metal Glasses
-Retro Glasses Giving this example URL structure: https://www.xxxxxxxxxxxxx.co.uk/product-category/womens/rimless-glasses/ This would solve my hyphenation problem, however my fear is the top level category on it's own is not descriptive enough when viewed as stand alone: https://www.xxxxxxxxxxxxx.co.uk/product-category/womens/ The second part of my question relates to how to deal with the change in URL structure. I am using Yoast Premium, so will that pick up the changes and automatically redirect to the new one as it does when done manually? Or will I need to take a different approach using HTACCESS commands? I hope the above makes sense, Many thanks, Bob0 -
Url folder structure
I work for a travel site and we have pages for properties in destinations and am trying to decide how best to organize the URLs basically we have our main domain, resort pages and we'll also have articles about each resort so the URL structure will actually get longer:
Technical SEO | | Vacatia_SEO
A. domain.com/main-keyword/state/city-region/resort-name
_ domain.com/family-condo-for-rent/orlando-florida/liki-tiki-village_ _ domain.com/main-keyword-in-state-city/resort-name-feature _
_ domain.com/family-condo-for-rent/orlando-florida/liki-tiki-village/kid-friend-pool_ B. Another way to structure would be to remove the location and keyword folders and combine. Note that some of the resort names are long and spaces are being replaced dynamically with dashes.
ex. domain.com/main-keyword-in-state-city/resort-name
_ domain.com/family-condo-for-rent-in-orlando-florida/liki-tiki-village_ _ domain.com/main-keyword-in-state-city/resort-name-feature_
_ domain.com/family-condo-for-rent-in-orlando-florida/liki-tiki-village-kid-friend-pool_ Question: is that too many folders or should i combine or break up? What would you do with this? Trying to avoid too many dashes.0 -
Spaces (actual spaces) in URL
Hi all, Is there a huge loss of SEO performance if a URL shows spaces with an actual space (i.e. %20) in the URL rather than a "-" (or indeed a "_")? I know the preferred option is to have a "-", but I am just wondering if it is worth our effort to manually change the "%20" to a "-" in all the instances? Thanks 🙂 Diana
Technical SEO | | Diana.varbanescu0 -
Best URL format for pagination
We're currently changing the URL format of our website search, we have been discussing a lot and cannot decide the past way to pass the pagination parameter for SEO. We narrowed down to the options. www.website.com/apples/p2 - www.website.com/apples?page=2 - www.website.com/apples/page/2 What would give us best ranking returns? What do you think?
Technical SEO | | HelpSaude0